Background & Business Challenge

Horizon Contracting provides landscape construction and maintenance services in addition to a variety of other types of mechanical field services. They were looking for validation in determining the appropriate systems to use for their Hydrovac division. They were using QuickBooks Online (QBO) and a few peripheral systems which they had migrated to a year prior, an initiative that was led by some former staff members. Leadership was seeing a variety of inefficient workflows as well as other data management problems that staff had to deal with. They were not seeing the same issues with the rest of the company and wanted to ensure that their intent to bring this data back into the same systems as all other divisions was the right option.

“Jeff gave us exceptionally detailed clarity that this move would be the right one, delivered a clear plan to make it happen, then managed the migration process. It went so smoothly that barely anyone noticed it was happening. It was the first time in the company’s history that this type of project was properly managed and completed without a hitch.” Naved Khan, Director of Finance, Horizon Contracting

Critical Pain Points

• Too much time spent on inefficient billing processes
• A lot of time dedicated to consolidating data across multiple systems to produce accurate financial statements
• Errors in transactional data from QBO’s payroll and tax management modules

Desired Outcomes

• Eliminate the duplication of systems
• Improve the accuracy of financial data management
• Improve the efficiency of AP and AR processes

Evaluation & Planning

I spent two months conducting a study to determine if Horizon’s workflows were highly inefficient and ought to be migrated back to the company’s ERP. I found that the following tools were being used:

• QuickBooks Online
• RapidWorks
• T-Sheets (QuickBooks Time)
• Plooto
• Approval Max

Interviewees expressed the existence of many problems with this alternate tech stack and their related workflows. Ultimately, my analysis supported leadership’s hypothesis to consolidate back to the systems used by the rest of the company. Following this conclusion, I built a detailed project plan to guide the migration process that would be done over a 4-month period.

Implementation

I developed a step-by-step migration plan in Asana to clarify the timeline and track progress. Key collaborators within Horizon were given access to help them monitor progress. Using this tool, I directed all work activities, assuring we were moving forward as planned and reported progress to leadership on a weekly basis. The migration process took 4 months to complete in line with the original plan and did not require any spending on new software.

In addition, I developed 10 process guides to provide clarity on how to perform tasks such as:

• Setting up new customers and vendors
• Configuring customer and vendor records for different payment methods
• Generating and sending invoices
• Receiving and paying bills

Results

• Horizon received clear validation that the use of QBO was not appropriate for its business and should migrate back to Viewpoint Spectrum.
• Horizon received a detailed plan that identified the key activities needed to complete the migration, who would be responsible for them and the timeline on which the project would be done.
• Horizon saw a seamless migration process completed on time, and on budget with minimal disruption to normal operations.
• Horizon gained documented visibility on its processes