Moving is quick and comfortable
The rehousing of the office is a several weeks of nightmare. Besides physical moving there are a lot of things to arrange, announcements, service provider changes, notification of partners. To deliver a well-oiled running system is not an easy task besides managing the daily business routine. We cannot afford closing the office for weeks or being unavailable. The system of EO reduced the weeks to minutes and the switch did not cause a bigger effort than to sit into the chair next to me. We relocated our official seat form Óbuda to 25-26 Apor Vilmos square in district 12. The transfer of the most important office means and personal objects took place quick as thought. The telephone of our customer service department (+36 1 700-1200) rung in the old office at 13.00 p.m. on the day of relocation, but our customer service representative already received the calls at 13.45 in the new office.
It is working with minimal means too!
Due to technical reasons the fixed-line internet connection was out of order for a week in our office. There is no life without internet access; therefore we needed an urgent solution. With the help of a mobile internet connection and a WiFi router we were able to restore the order in seconds and everyone could work on uninterruptedly. Since we don’t use a local server or a LAN in the Elastoffice system and each notebook is already furnished with WiFi connection, after a while nobody realized that communication was not running on the regular fixed-line internet.
C9 instead of e-mail
However today Smartphones are already handling the e-mails, lots of problems arise in contacts via e-mail. The concerned cannot always react immediately, information get lost in the course of long chain-letters and the latter retrieval also proved to be difficult. In the system of C9 we have the possibility to comment on tasks or files that are preserved and treated by the system in the right place and showed together if we wanted to look into a former comment. This way everything takes place in an orderly way and we don’t miss any important information. We do not load the system and each other with endless mails; everyone may find the relevant information in the directory of the project.
New perspective in accounting
The kind of technical development and change in approach could not yet reach the accounting profession it has been eager about for years. Thought the facilities provided by the various accounting software and the internet give some plus in the field of efficiency and speed, but far not what we would have really needed. The permanently billowing jobs, the plenty of administration, the document handling, storage and systemization not closely related to the accountant’s scope of activities cause headache and consume enormous time. The services provided by the Elastoffice have opened a whole new perspective within the craft. Now that we use the system daily at last and see its benefits more and more, I can bravely declare that an old dream seems to be coming true.
New facilities with the C9 system of Elastoffice:
- Up-to-date organisation of business administration, up-to-date accounting, and no one month slippages from the receipt of vouchers until procession.
- Authorised personnel get daily information.
- The accountant is executing expressly professional work, does not spend time with systemization of the vouchers, and does not store vouchers.
- The accountant is able to supply more customers with less work.
- Customers receive an accounting service executed on high professional level.
- With the expansion of the access rights the auditor of the company may see a complete documentation, on the basis of which he or she can compile his/her own working papers, this way he or she doesn’t need to store paper based documents and audit can take place continuously in the course of the business year.
- The internet based, location independent, flexible access mode gives enormous freedom.
- Maximal sense of security in that our confidential and valuable materials cannot be lost due to a system or hardware error.
- Significant reduction of postal and other administrative expenses, possibility of electronic invoicing and digital signature.
Further facilities in the future:
- We strive to establish a professional accounting team and a nation wide network, who select out professionally inadequate experts thus enhancing the prestige of accounting profession.
- We are planning to create the possibility of continuous information supply and monitoring for accountants joining the system with the employment of internal auditors being highly qualified 1. tax experts 2. auditors.
- We wish to provide the users of the system with continuous training that replaces the obligatory training of certified public accountants and ensures professional further development.
- Besides accountants we plan to build up an expert network too: legal experts, tender writers, labour experts … what our customers need.
- Another aim of ours is the creation of central prices and work carried out on the basis of obligatory professional protocol that ensures the grounds of honest work (there are no unreal low or high prices, the professional requirements are exactly defined).
This system will be suited to serve as a model of honest tax-paying enterprise and professional accountant for the internal revenue service. This way cooperation could be established with the revenue service in reference to the tax control of the enterprises operating within the C9 system of Elastoffice be reduced to the minimum following some test controls.
We will certainly keep it!
I could say that we applied a project manager. Because in a sense the C9 PROJECTs programme of Elastoffice is just like a skilled fellow worker. The initially unwilling colleagues quickly became acquainted with the interface because no complicated training was required to learn how to use it.
What we liked the most:
- The system provided up-to-date work-hour records. With the help of Excel’s report function were generated the required executive statements, pivot reports in seconds.
- The record of labour expenditure, the setting of the necessary budget, the transparent visual editing of the project process perfectly met our project controlling requirements!
- It has replaced a remarkable part of the functions of the programme used so far and it covered the whole spectrum of the lifecycle management of the tasks.
- Commenting is a very useful function with the help of which it is possible to designate one by one the recipients of a notification. This way any task handover, request for approval will remain unnoticed even in the case of colleagues working far away from each other.
We love it and use it!
Without borders
Telephone communication between countries represents a significant cost for international companies. I wanted not to be worried about the costs of telephone conversations with strategic partners, suppliers and consultants located in different countries. What is worse is that if someone is looking for me in my London or Luzern office and cannot reach me, or the help of a telephone dispatcher speaking multiple languages is necessary to reach me, if at all. Within the Elastoffice system, conversation is free of charge thanks to the internet based service. Thanks to the VoIP telephone system the telephone is ringing right where I am. I can divert the call to my mobile and there is no need for human involvement which is a further cost reduction factor. Without the system of Elastoffice I simply would be incapable of following and controlling the events taking place in the active enterprises under my control (United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Hungary, Rumania, and Switzerland).
Great help with tender writing!
We have never planned to take over a large scale SAP system. It requires too much time, energy and money until this kind of investment turns profitable and operable. The advantage of Elastoffice services is that it is not necessary to burden the colleagues with the use of a new system at once; it is possible to proceed gradually.
We first started to use the docMONITOR filing, invoice management programme of C9 at Netlock and I can say we fell for it right away. The use is extremely simple, everything is up-to-date and well-organized and with the authenticated documents we can even protect the environment.
On the basis of our good experiences and the feedback of our colleagues it was not questionable for us to examine further fields as well where we might spread the "electronic office" function. As the result of the internal survey and following multiple reconciliations we had chosen the PROJECTs programme which we started to use in connection with the National Development Agency’s Economic Competitiveness Operational Programme tender. It is well-known that in the case of tenders funded from state or EU sources the successful tenderer must comply with very strict settlement and registry obligations that mean a significant administrative extra burden for an organisation. C9 system besides facilitating to comply with these administrative regulations, makes the work for the professional leaders and the colleagues user friendly and transparent with a transparent project management surface– though they are often working in separate physical places, different settlements – to have view on each other’s job, to be up-to-date and through this - especially in the case of back-to-back development tasks - to be able to plan and organize the certain work phases exactly . The managing of the vast documentation arisen in the course of the project became almost automatic. I am sure that if web ring out the by then archived materials, we will be able to navigate among them as easy as if we finished the work the day before!
On the whole we can say that we are fully satisfied with the operation of C9 system and the tangible advantages provided by the system. We plan to proceed this year and we want to examine the subsequent benefits resulting from the total integration of C9 system and openERP enterprise management system instead of SAPB1 used in NetLock at the time being. If we like the functionality of openERP then in the next step we realize the total integration of C9 docMONITOR module and the accounting module of openERP, subsequently the introduction of CMR module too.
Katalin Szűcs, director, NetLock Informatikai és Hálózatbiztonsági Szolgáltató Kft.