Customer Solution Case Study
/ / Software Vendor Extends Value for Customer, Competes Globally Through Partner Program
Overview
Country or Region:United States
Industry:High Tech and Electronics
Customer Profile
Silver Bullet Technologies, located in Miami, Florida, is an independent software vendor (ISV) that specializes in business solutions for companies engaged in international trade.
Business Situation
Silver Bullet wanted to find an accounting solution that would integrate with its software to meet the needs of customers like Global Link Logistics, a freight forwarder.
Solution
Silver Bullet became a Microsoft® Certified Partner.Throughpartnerships with other vendors,it provided an integrated solution for Global Link Logisticsand gained a global reseller channel.
Benefits
Extended value of customer’s investment
Improved customer’s productivity and profitability
Increased customer’s borrowing capacity by U.S.$1 million
Helped drive sales for vendor and provided global sales force / “Microsoft has truly made us a global company even though we only have one office in Miami.”
Marcia Dorer, Partner, Silver Bullet
Silver Bullet Technologies, an independent software vendor (ISV) in Miami, Florida, offers software to help freight forwarders manage the complex processes and documentation required to export, import, and deliver goods internationally. But the ISV’s customers needed an integrated logistics and accounting solution. Silver Bullet found the answer with the Microsoft® Partner Program. The ISV integrated its SB Freight product with the accounting applications in Microsoft Business Solutions–Great Plains® (now part of Microsoft Dynamics™), while working with another Microsoft Partner. As a result, one customer, Global Link Logistics, extended the value of its Microsoft software, boosting productivity and profitability, and increasing its borrowing capacity by U.S.$1 million. And thanks to its relationship with Microsoft, Silver Bullet found a solution that helps drives sales and gainedan effective global sales force.
Situation
Silver Bullet Technologies, an independent software vendor (ISV) founded in 1999 and located in MiamiFlorida, develops software for companies in international trade. Soon after the company was founded, it began working on a freight-forwarding solution.
Customers turn to Silver Bullet to help them manage the complexities of the import/export trade. A freight forwarder is basically an architect of transport, ensuring that goods leave a manufacturing or distribution facility and arrive at the ultimate destination intact and on time. “We’re talking about goods from Asia arriving in Long Beach, California, today and arriving in North Carolina tomorrow,” says Marcia Dorer, Partner at Silver Bullet. “A good freight forwarder depends on providing a high level of customer service, and our job is to make it easier for customers with software that serves their needs.”
Problems Faced by Freight Forwarders
Freight forwarders must deal with a number of events and charges in the shipment of goods. During the typical four to six weeks from the initiation of an order to the final delivery, the freight forwarder must pay the charges for shipping the goods—first by container ship, then by truck, rail, or both—and handle the enormous amount of paperwork associated with the process.For example, the freight forwarder must deal with purchase orders, invoices, payments, customs documents, and delivery orders.
At any point, delays can arise that affect the shipment and costs. If a trucker is late picking up a container from a port, for example, then the container will be stored and warehouse charges incurred. If bad weather occurs, the shipment may be rerouted, adding to expenses.
With so many contingencies, handling the logistics and tracking the shipment and charges become vital for the freight forwarder.
The ISV’s customers face other issues in managing the logistics of freight forwarding, as well. For example, their invoicing has to be done on a shipment level. But each shipment may involve multiple invoices for one company, which complicates the tracking of payables and receivables. Information entered into the front-office software—typically a Web-based application that includes screens for entering and viewing shipment information and associated documents created during the process—is difficult to reconcile with the customer’s accounting software.
A freight forwarder needs to know its profitability on a per-shipment basis to remain competitive. But if all the invoices associated with a shipment are not paid and consolidated quickly, it can take months for the freight forwarder to assess the profitability of the shipment and its routing. By then, many more shipments may have taken place, with potentially disastrous consequences if the freight forwarder has lost money on each one. This specialized accounting need troubled the ISV’s customers.
Illustration of Customer Needs
One Silver Bullet customer that illustrates many of the difficulties that freight forwarders face is Global Link Logistics, a privately held company located in Atlanta, Georgia. As a third-party logistics provider, Global Link Logistics specializes in helping customers in many diverse businesses to transport products between Asia and the United States. Global Link Logistics is also one of the fastest-growing companies in Atlanta, experiencing revenue growth of 35 percent a year, and posting revenues ofU.S.$150 million in 2004. As a result, the company had outgrown its small-business accounting software and needed an integrated logistics and accounting solution to address the kinds of problems outlined above.
In addition, the previous software was not compliant with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), because the financial figures the software produced could, in effect, be “erased.” An employee could literally rewrite the numbers and no trail would be produced. “We needed software that could help us continue to grow,” says Clark Christensen, Chief Financial Officer, Global Link Logistics. “If we ever wanted to become a public company—which we might one day consider—then we needed to be GAAP-compliant.”
Needs of Vendor
Besides a desire to address customers’ needs, Silver Bullet faced another challenge: as a young company, it did not have the budget to invest in building a sales force to sell its product around the world. To meet that challenge, Dorer and the other partners began to look at what the company could do with Microsoft.
Solution
To help solve its customers’ specialized accounting needs, Silver Bullet considered adding an accounting function to its freight-forwarding software to create an integrated logistics and accounting solution. Many of the ISV’s competitors had created an accounting solution as part of their offerings. “But we were experts in international trade, not CPAs,” says Dorer. “So, in 2002, we began to look for accounting software that would integrate with our product.”
Microsoft Business Solutions
Silver Bullet looked at Microsoft® Business Solutions–Great Plains® business management software, which includes the functional series Microsoft Business Solutions for Financial Management–Great Plains with applications/modules to handle the general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, collections management, and more.
Microsoft Great Plains offers many industry standards and technologies for integrating other applications, including the Microsoft .NET Framework component of the Microsoft operating system and Extensible Markup Language (XML), the universal standard for structuring data and documents on the Web.
Microsoft Partner Program
The ISV also saw that Microsoft offered solutions to help not only its customers, but Silver Bullet as well. “I was very impressed with their model of selling through other Microsoft Partners,” Dorer says. “We decided to become a Microsoft Partner and earn a competency in Microsoft Business Solutions and in ISV/Software Solutions.”
It took Silver Bullet a few months to become certified and get its staff trained on Microsoft Great Plains. The ISV also continued to develop its own product. Silver Bullet used the Microsoft Visual C++® .NET 2003 development environment and the Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET 2003 to create its product. The process of certification and the further product enhancement took about a year, and in 2004, Silver Bullet brought SB Freight to market.
The Combined Solution
The ISV began working with Microsoft Certified Partner nexDimension soon after the product launched in a deployment that illustrates the workings of the partnership.
nexDimension deployed Microsoft Great Plains for Global Link Logistics, and Silver Bullet provided the following modules of SB Freight:
SB Import Ocean—A front-office application that integrates with Microsoft Great Plains and the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration client and the Microsoft Office Excel® 2003 spreadsheet software for handling shipping by ocean freight
SB Export Ocean—A corresponding application for the export side of the shipment
SB Event Management—An application that enables freight forwarders to manage supply-chain events and send messages about the events to stakeholders
Silver Bullet integrated its software and a Web-based customs brokerage application with Microsoft Great Plains by using Microsoft Great Plains Integration Manager and Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000, part of Microsoft Windows Server System™integrated server software for database storage. With XML integration, SB Freight applications automatically populate fields in the operations platform that come from vendors and trading partners.
The deployment group for the ISV provided Global Link Logistics with an event panel and inbound data panel that the company can use to view and monitor information coming into the system. In addition, nexDimensionused a product from a third-party vendor to set up automatic business alerts should problems arise that affect shipments. Microsoft SQL Server 2000 is used for database storage in the integrated logistics and accounting system.
Silver Bullet also provided Global Link Logistics with XML integration and Electronic Data Interchange (EDI)—for exchange of data by standard telephone lines or the Internet—with their customers in several places in Asia, including China, the Philippines, Vietnam, and Hong Kong. Now, when agents at Global Link Logistics see that certain events have occurred—such as a shipment clearing customs or leaving a warehouse—they can notify customers electronically. Customers can then view the information through another Web-based application.
The technical experts from Silver Bullet and nexDimension completed the deployment and integrations in December 2004, finishing the project in less than 90 days. The only worry with the implementation was that the agents at Global Link Logistics—who liked the previous system—might have some difficulty adjusting to the new integrated system. But the concerns were short-lived. Although the new software was more complex, the familiar interface—similar to the interface of Microsoft Office applications—meant that the agents quickly mastered it. “This integrated system is so powerful, yet so easy to use,” says Dorer. “The users had no trouble learning it.”
Benefits
By integrating its freight-forwarding software with Microsoft Great Plains, both Silver Bullet and its customers have enjoyed significant business gains. And because customers feel a company that partners with Microsoft will continue to serve them in the future, the relationship also helps drive sales for the ISV. What’s more, Silver Bullet, which markets a product designed for the international market, has achieved a global presence on a limited budget through the Microsoft Partner Program.
Extended Value of the Customer’s Investment
“I think Microsoft has the right philosophy,” says Dorer. “Because Microsoft software is affordable, adaptable, and easily integrated with so many applications, customers can use our software to extend the value of their investment.”
For Global Link Logistics, for example, the integration of the Silver Bullet software with Microsoft Great Plains software has provided dramatic improvements in data accuracy it could not have achieved with only one product. “Now, when invoices come in, they are automatically accrued, so we can tell our profitability at any given time,” says Christensen. “We now have accurate, real-time data.” With this improvement, Global Link Logistics has achieved the data integrity it needs to be GAAP-compliant.
The integration has also provided Global Link Logistics with a solution that can grow along with the company. “The ability to add to their solutionsis an important advantage to our customers,” says Dorer. “Vertical market software does not offer the flexibility that freight forwarders need to grow. And the total cost of ownership of our integrated solution is unbeatable, compared to the competition.”
Improved Productivity and Profitability for Customer
The automatic accrual of invoices saves one employee three days of work per month. And instead of waiting weeks to determine that a particular routing is too costly, managers know at once. “With this knowledge, we improved the profitability of 5 percent of our containers by $250, and that resulted in a first-year savings of half-a-million dollars,” says Christensen.
After Global Link Logistics adopted the integrated software solution, productivity rose by 20 percent. If the trend continues, the freight forwarder will save $242,000 per year. The automated processes have reduced costs in other areas, too. For example, with increased visibility into the status of invoices, Global Link Logistics was able to pay invoices faster and save money on interest. That savings alone amounts to $50,000 per year.
The financial benefits to Global Link Logistics continue to mount. It has improved itsborrowing capacity by more than $1 million—critical to a company that wants to grow. With the ability to provide more reports to its own customers, Global Link Logistics believes it will close an additional 5 percent in sales it would not have achieved without the improvements—potentially an extra $7.5 million. “We got everything we asked for,” says Christensen. “We now have operational systems talking to financial systems and customer visibility—which all leads to profitability.”
Helped Drive Sales for ISV
Dorer sees another advantage in the pairing of Silver Bullet software with Microsoft software. “Customers want to simplify their lives, not complicate them,” says Dorer. “They don’t need different interfaces and tools.” Another aspect of simplifying customers’ lives, Dorer believes, is the peace of mind they get from buying an integrated solution. “They know when Microsoft comes out with a new version, the ISV is likely to update its software—which makes our product more attractive than the competition and drives sales.” Because Silver Bullet started with Microsoft from the beginning, the company cannot quantify how much it has gained from the relationship, but says Dorer, “As a new company, it would be hard to get sales like the one at Global Link Logistics without the Microsoft connection.”
Provided a Global Sales Force for the ISV
As a fledgling software company, Silver Bullet lacked a large marketing budget. The Microsoft Partner Program has provided it with something else it could not otherwise have enjoyed—a global sales force for its product. The company is now working with a Microsoft partner in Singapore, another in Colombia, and is in negotiations with a partner in Hong Kong.
Dorer believes that the training, support, and business relationships Silver Bullet has found through the Microsoft Partner Program have been critical to its success as a vertical- market software developer. “How could Silver Bullet possibly make these arrangements without the reseller channel?” Dorer asks. “It would be too costly. Microsoft has truly made us a global company even though we only have one office in Miami.”
Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics is a line of integrated, adaptable business management solutions that enables you and your people to make business decisions with greater confidence. Microsoft Dynamics works like familiar Microsoft software such as Microsoft Office, which means less of a learning curve for your people, so they can get up and running quickly and focus on what’s most important. And because it is from Microsoft, it easily works with the systems your company already has implemented. By automating and streamlining financial, customer relationship
and supply chain processes, Microsoft Dynamics brings together people, processes and technologies, increasing the productivity and effectiveness of your business, and helping you drive business success.
For more information about Microsoft Dynamics, go to: