News Archives

The Process of Conversion

Customer Spotlight: Midlantic Machinery

PFW Password - Fall 2004 Marty Rogers is the IT Manager at Midlantic Machinery. With locations in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware, Midlantic Machinery is a Komatsu industrial equipment dealership.

by Marty Rogers

It's no secret that the modern equipment dealership is critically dependent upon its business system. For two years we hadn't been able to get any kind of true handle on our business because useful management information just wasn't built into the system we had. That ended on February 2nd, 2004, when we began to run our business on the PFW system. Today, we spend much more time running our business and far less trying to figure out software problems.

End of story? Well, not exactly. Many things had to happen from the time in June of 2003 when it was decided that we would be replacing our system. All that we had in our favor was that the vast majority of our users were ready and willing for a change. But change to what? Fortunately, we discovered pretty quickly that of the existing contenders, PFW was our clear choice.

We'd become cynical about the kind of hype thrown around by system vendors. We weren't impressed by buzz words. We were, however, pretty impressed with the solid track record of PFW's proven product and its future development direction. Equally as important was the caliber of the personnel who would be responsible for assisting us in the transition. Early on, we felt very comfortable with the abilities of all the PFW people we met. That confidence has never wavered.

The PFW conversion team helped us enormously. Right from the start they conducted excellent planning meetings where we laid out a comprehensive and accurate plan, which is absolutely critical in a complicated installation like ours -- and stuck to it with their help. At each step of the way PFW was exceptionally helpful and focused on our success. At conversion, we were very pleased with the PFW team who covered our sites. They handled everything in stride, minimizing user stress levels with their expert knowledge and patience that bordered on sainthood.

In the six months since conversion we have had the time to really put the system through its paces and are still very happy we made the decision to go with PFW. We are especially pleased with the system's configurability, speed and accuracy. PFW IntelliDealer's user friendliness helps make training faster for us, and it supports ODBC, which makes using our favorite analysis and reporting tools like Microsoft Access and Excel -- as well as Crystal Reports -- pretty straightforward. By comparison, after our six-month adjustment period, we are getting more done in less time than after spending well over two years with another system. The right choice? You bet!