LoopUp is Alcatel-Lucent’s chosen cloud services partner in the UK. The cloud specialist telecoms company is well aware that web-based services offer greater resilience, flexibility for growth and significant savings on hardware and maintenance. When Finance Director Gail Collett needed to find an accounting system which would give her specific, detailed analysis. She chose Aqilla’s cloud-based software with these added benefits in mind.

The need

LoopUp had been using Sage Line 50 but its needs had outgrown Sage’s capabilities.

“Sage is a great product, but it just couldn’t give us the detailed level of analysis we needed.”

Gail suspected the business was subscribing to line rental services which weren’t being used by clients but she had no way of identifying which accounts were losing money. She explained, “In our industry, it is essential to be able to identify and allocate individual client costs from a single supplier invoice in order to control profitability.”

The search

LoopUp began the process to find a new system in August. In January the team chose cloud-based Aqilla and it was up and running in a mere eight days.

The Aqilla team spent time scoping out and testing the configuration needed to create the essential piece of analysis. Impressed with the approach and Aqilla’s flexible design Gail said:

“Unlike other suppliers, Aqilla didn’t show me the shape of the product, they asked me about our business and the implementation was shaped to fit. I knew it was going to work from both a product and a relationship perspective."

Sage Line 200, Microsoft Dynamics and Access Accounts were among the other products evaluated. Some products were quickly ruled out on functionality, others required up to £50K in software, consultancy and implementation services and lengthy installation periods before they would begin to show results.

The project

The main concern was to address the issue of cost allocation, allowing Switch to analyse profitability at customer level. Phase 1 of the project, complete in just over one week, gave them working accounts. Phase 2 is to complete the customer profitability analysis and develop the reporting.

Aqilla’s Excel interface meant the data migration went smoothly and the team was soon building reports.

Gail knew from previous experience that the scope of any implementation project is prone to change. She said “With any accounts package, there is a danger of getting what you ask for and not what you need. It’s so easy to get your spec wrong. With Aqilla, what really works for me is the ability to change your mind without serious consequences. The Aqilla team listened to our needs and then worked with us to develop our solution.”

Although Aqilla supported the initial part of the implementation, Gail has been able to keep project costs to a minimum. Aqilla’s uncomplicated design means her team can independently refine the system.

Phase 3 of the project will allow more staff direct access to Aqilla to submit expenses and the sign-off process will be automated. They will be able to scan receipts on their devices and submit them from wherever they are. With almost half of the staff submitting expenses regularly on a spreadsheet, this will save everyone a significant amount of time.

The future

LoopUp intends to continue working with Aqilla to make good use of other features. The landing page gives users a snapshot of relevant KPIs and this dashboard is configurable at user level. Information from the specialised billing software and CRM system will be integrated into Aqilla to improve the automation of processing.

Gail wants to create dashboards for the management team which will show KPIs in real time and allow access to vital information using Aqilla’s built-in Business Intelligence features.

Describing her aim she says “Management should have access at all times, wherever they are, to live performance data. Aqilla gives you that essential snapshot then allows you to dig deeper. The level of analysis we can produce from Aqilla means that we can share information of real value. It will improve the speed and quality of our decision-making.”

“We had a good understanding of the detail Gail needed in her reporting and we knew how we were going to approach it so, when it came to implementation, we were slightly ahead of time.” says Hugh Scantlebury, CEO at Aqilla.