Warehousing and Logistics Provider Saves 20 Hours a Month, Elevates Insights with 36 Dashboards

Over 106 years, warehousing and logistics provider Peoples Services has thrived by making it easy for its clients to store and move products.

Yet storing, moving, and utilizing financial data was a challenge for the 700-person company. Reliance on an antiquated AS/400 system made it difficult for Peoples Services to manage financial data and leverage it to support informed business decisions.

That’s all changed since the Ohio-based company upgraded from the DOS-based AS/400 to Sage Intacct. Adam Herman, the company treasurer, offers an apt analogy for the switch:

“It was like going from the Wright brothers to the Apollo program overnight,” as Herman says in our new Peoples Services success story.

Speeding the Close by Three Days

Peoples Services, a network of third-party logistics (3PL) companies with 45 warehouses, 8 million square feet of storage space, and local truck transport services across seven states, has realized remarkable efficiency gains with its move to Sage Intacct. The company has:

• Eliminated 16 hours a month previously spent on journal entries
• Saved another four hours a month on consolidations across 10 entities
• Cut up to three days from closing the books each month
• Trimmed eight hours in annual budgeting with custom reports exporting to Excel

Plus, Peoples Services no longer needs to engage its original AS/400 programmer, a retired employee now working as an independent contractor, to administer and tweak the system.

“Our AS/400 had quite a bit of custom programming added to it over the years,” Herman explained. “We had to bring in our former in-house programmer as a contractor because if we needed something specific, he was the only one who knew how to do it.”

More Informed and Engaged Management

Instead, Peoples Services is taking advantage of Sage Intacct’s ease of use to provide personalized dashboards to about 36 managers. That equips them with on-demand access to timely information that’s building a more agile and data-driven business.

"Managers have the information they need right on their dashboards,” Herman said. “They can drill down on their own instead of calling us with questions, and that makes for a more informed and engaged management team.”

For example, dashboards and performance cards spotlight key metrics such as storage revenue per square foot, and handling revenue per labor hour. “Those are things we couldn’t have done with AS/400,” Herman said.

And management has more timely data because Peoples Services has eliminated lag times that it suffered with the AS/400. For example, the accounting team couldn’t produce monthly financial statements for January, February, and March until it had closed out the fiscal year, meaning rapid-fire production of financial statements early in the year.

And each month, accounting couldn’t post journal entries until it had closed out its subsidiary ledgers, delaying the monthly close. “We’re now able to spread the work out more evenly over the month, instead of having this massive crunch when we start the closing cycle,” Herman said.

Kudos from Company Executives

The dramatic improvements have not gone unnoticed by the executive team.

“My team has received several compliments from the president on down on how much they appreciate that we can quickly finalize a month, get information to them, and answer any questions they may have,” Herman said. “The accounting team is a better partner to the business because we’re not providing stale information that’s several weeks old.”

And the accounting team is benefiting with higher morale and less stress and overtime. Features such as predictive text, by which Sage Intacct offers a list as a user enters text into a search bar, are welcome ease-of-use enhancements over the AS/400.

With the big efficiency improvements, Herman himself has had new time to do volunteer financial work for his church, and coach his son’s baseball and flag football teams.

“I've been freed up to spend more time with my family and volunteer now that I know I can get my work done quickly and accurately in Sage Intacct,” Herman said.

See our Peoples Services success story to learn more about how the company has created a more nimble and flexible business with its move to Sage Intacct.