VT MAK reaps rewards from salesforce CPQ and Sage Intacct integration

Manually piecing together complex products and services into various configuration and pricing options that fit a B2B customer’s unique needs can be time-consuming work for a sales team. That’s a problem when customers expect pricing and options on demand.

And it creates a bottleneck for finance professionals who have to manually input contract data from a CRM application into an accounting system. That not only consumes time, it introduces the risk of data-entry errors that can cascade into bigger problems down the road.

VT MAK, a developer of 3D simulation and modeling software used in such industries as aerospace, defense, healthcare and transportation, has solved those issues with an elegant combination of the Salesforce CPQ (configure, price, quote) module and the Sage Intacct financial management platform.

As MAK Controller Thomas Low notes in our new VT MAK customer success story, integrating Sage Intacct and Salesforce CPQ, part of the broader Salesforce CRM application, is paying off with a streamlined order-to-cash process and huge time savings for the finance team.

“We’re certainly getting invoices out faster, because information comes over correctly the first time and we don’t have to spend a lot of time checking and reworking it,” Low said. “Sage Intacct lets my staff stop doing manual work so they can focus on value-add activities like reporting and improving DSO (days sales outstanding).”

40 More Hours a Week for Value-Add Work

At MAK, with customers that include Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, and the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Salesforce CPQ gives sales reps a purpose-built platform to tailor configurations, pricing and quotes without tons of error-prone work. That data moves seamlessly into Sage Intacct, which automatically generates contract-based billing and revenue schedules.

Since moving to Sage Intacct from an on-premise legacy accounting system, The Cambridge, Mass.-based company has cut out roughly 40 hours a week of manual work for the four-person finance team — through faster order-to-cash as well as reporting, which previously had been done in spreadsheets.

“Freeing the team from menial tasks means they can focus on creating value for the company,” Low said. “The individual is now doing work that’s more interesting and rewarding, and that increases job satisfaction.”

And it drives results for the company. For instance, DSO has been cut by 20%, down to 80 days, generating $500,000 in additional cash flow. The five-day monthly close is more efficient, accurate, and comprehensive. Reporting is 50% faster — and it’s delivering incisive insights that support evidence-based business decisions.

“Reporting in Sage Intacct is very powerful,” Low said. “You can get to a deep level of information instantaneously, point and click, whereas before you were guessing at revenue by product, or what you were spending on a product.”

Sage Intacct dimensional reporting has proven especially valuable in enabling MAK to drill down on revenue by customer, products, contracts and more, giving the company insights to help drive growth and profitability.

“Sage Intacct gives us actionable information to quickly make evidence-based business decisions, and that’s incredibly powerful,” Low said.

To learn more about how MAK is reaping the rewards of Sage Intacct and Salesforce CPQ integration, check out our full customer success story.