Acclaim Client
HOED Research has a unique and distinctive businesses model with many moving parts. While they originally just wanted some help integrating the accounting side of MYOB EXO into their business, they were quickly sold on the benefits of automating their systems and processes. Two years down the track, they have been able to trim their team, and have greater clarity across their business.
HOED Research NZ is a CEM company providing timely insights for any business needing to understand how their levels of customer service and practices are affecting their customer acquisition and retainment. They tailor their work to best fit the client’s need, providing up-to-date reporting using their custom HOED software. At the forefront of their services is their Mystery Shopper programme, which is used across New Zealand and Australia.
Richard J Potton, Hoed Research NZ.
The business already had a custom built standalone database that did not integrate with any other software in their organisation. Information stored within each segment was essential to different aspects of their business, but there was a lot of triplicate handling of information, creating bottlenecks with the sharing of data. There was also a greater risk of human error through this manually intensive process.
HOED’s team wanted to remove manual invoicing, be able to send information to researchers in the field, and get the different aspects of their business connected, so that the right information would flow freely between them.
After an initial meeting with Acclaim, Richard and his team quickly realised that MYOB EXO would be able to resolve far more than his accounting requirements. Acclaim then completed an in-depth analysis of the business to learn as much as they could about their systems and the way their business functioned.
This allowed Acclaim to determine the very best path to take in improving existing business processes.
One of the most significant changes for HOED was the reduction of human hours stuck in administrative tasks. Before Acclaim started working with the business, the team was manually loading up to 2,500 invoices a month, and having to triple load data across all of their systems.
Eradicating this need saw Hoed able to reduce their team by five staff, which has had ongoing cost benefits to the business.
The cultural change in the workplace was huge. As the team no longer needed to do as much admin, there was more time for strategic planning and execution. HOED are now able to access data in real-time, leading to a more efficient business and cohesive team.
“We hadn’t realised the magnitude of change that bringing all the systems together would bring. As we began to understand how our data would be handled more effectively we began to see how everything could talk together.”
Throughout the entire change process, and through to today, HOED and Acclaim have worked closely together. Having a project manager dedicated allowed them to relax and trust that any issues would be resolved with full understanding of the intricacies of their business.
Help is a phone call away, and the Acclaim team often coach HOED’s staff remotely through the use of the Team Viewer App.
“The business is unique in what we do, and how it works. Acclaim continues to have a very high level of understanding of our business and really committed to understanding our business and what improvements might be required”
Understanding just how EXO can transform their business helped Richard and the HOED team realise they are still, even now, only utilising about 50% of what it can do for their business. As a result they’ve identified further opportunities and are planning phase two of their journey with Acclaim.
“We’re very lucky to have Acclaim partnering with us. We wouldn’t look anywhere else. They took a huge amount of manual effort off our shoulders as a business. There is so much trust in the relationship. They really understand how to build a relationship and create a high level of trust in both them, and EXO.”
“Implementing EXO with Acclaims help has saved us multiple hours of administrative time a week. It’s a huge cost saving to our business.”
“We spent five months with the team at Acclaim, working on the various options before we started implementing the EXO package, including talking to government agencies to ensure we were going to be managing the acquisition of confidential data
accurately.”
HOED has been able to cut many hours a week in terms of admin time since working with Acclaim.
They have now got all their separate databases talking to each other in real time, and no longer need to manually enter duplicate data.
They are able to automatically process thousands of Buyer Created Invoices instantly, and more.
More visibility has resulted in increased confidence.