Dowding, Reynard & Associates

Dowding, Reynard & Associates (DRA) was founded in 1984 and has quickly built an enviable reputation for its work on mining projects involving, platinum, diamonds, coal, chrome and base minerals.

With its enormous expertise in design and engineering (process, mechanical, electrical, civil and structural), DRA is capable of turning a flowsheet into a fully operational production facility. From offices in Johannesburg, the company co-ordinates activity on most the world’s major land masses, including Africa, Asia, South America, Canada and Australia.

DRA prides itself on designs that are not only practical, innovative and economical, but also capable of being fast-tracked into ‘quickest time to market’ solutions. As expected delivery times grow ever shorter, the ability to successfully co-ordinate all the individual strands of a project becomes increasingly important. Consequently, when Accountant Anne Scotting began the search for a new accounting system, integrated job costing topped her list of priorities. Following a series of in-depth demonstrations, and exposure to alternative products, Horizons proved decisive.

Anne says, “Access Accounts is the only mid-range system we found that could provide us with the functionality and integration we need to ensure our project costing is managed as tightly as possible.” A 5-user Horizons solution was installed in the company’s Johannesburg headquarters in late 2000, and before long this was expanded into a 10-user system.

For Anne, the benefits of changing to Access quickly became apparent. She says, “When you’re as busy as we are, any duplication of effort, such as the recapturing of data, is a waste of resources. Having a fully integrated contract costing system that is transaction auditable has made our accounts department much more efficient. Additionally, it has enabled us to give our project managers more meaningful information on progress and profitability far more quickly than in the past.”

Horizons also had some unexpected benefits in store for DRA. System-wide ease of use, drill-down options and in-built reports all provided added value, while the ability to export data directly into Microsoft Excel proved extremely useful for management reporting.

Recently, DRA decided to take their accounting system to the next level and gain the benefits of an industry-standard database. In December 2001, the company completed an upgrade from Horizons to the flagship product of the Access Accounts range, Dimensions.

Implementing a Dimensions solution (optimised to run on Microsoft SQL 2000) could hardly have been any more straightforward. The entire process took less than a week and had minimal impact on DRA’s daily operations. Anne says, “The fact that Access Accounts has proven to be so scaleable is an added advantage. We have been able to upgrade to Dimensions without losing any investment in training our resources, as the software has essentially the same look and feel across the range. And we only had to pay the difference between the cost of the two packages.”

Aside from the increased speed, efficiency and security offered by its SQL Server database, Dimensions includes a compulsory costing feature. This ensures that every relevant transaction is automatically analysed to the appropriate cost centres (on a real-time basis) and brings even greater accuracy to the assessment of all project-based activities. This was a key factor in the upgrade decision.

While DRA may have been confident that moving to Horizons was the correct thing to do, the company is even more convinced of the value of its new Dimensions solution. “When we purchased Horizons in 2000, the main deciding factor was the flexibility and functionality of the Job Costing module,” says Anne Scotting. Today, the open systems environment provided by SQL Server Dimensions is helping to extend these benefits across the entire company.