Switch to Sage Timberline Office Helps Mechanical Contractor Increase Productivity and Improve Collaboration

BEAVERTON, OR--(Marketwire - March 13, 2008) - Hunter-Davisson, an award winning mechanical contractor, is known for its ability to meet exacting Green Building standards as it designs, installs, repairs and maintains heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) systems for commercial buildings.

The Portland, Ore.-based company has received numerous awards, including the Oregon Occupational Safety and Health Administration's top safety distinction in 2006 and the Gold U.S. Green Building Council's Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for existing buildings (LEED-EB) rating in 2006 for the energy efficiency of its own office building.

Hunter-Davisson's high standards extend to its operations. That's why when facing rapid growth, the company began looking for a business management solution.

"We had a Service Management system that was inflexible and outdated. In addition, we were performing many processes manually and with Excel spreadsheets, entering the same data two and three times. That made it difficult to manage growth," says Dave Wright, vice president of Hunter-Davisson. "We chose Sage Timberline Office because it was one of the few solutions designed specifically for construction that spanned our entire business -- including new construction and service. The system also works easily with third-party products, which allows us to expand our capabilities; for example, we've installed mobile software for our service technicians."

Since Hunter-Davisson implemented Sage Timberline Office, everyone in the company from estimators to project and service managers to purchasing, inventory and accounts payable personnel use the same system.

"We enter data once and make it available to all other necessary applications. This has improved our productivity across the board, allowing us to grow from $10.3 million in revenues in 2002 to $20 million in 2006 without adding business support staff."

The integration between Estimating, Job Cost, Project Management, Inventory and Accounting modules improves and streamlines new construction projects.

"The Sage Timberline Office Estimating module has improved the consistency of estimates created by our eight estimators. Templates that include all categories of costs -- such as equipment, labor, overhead, materials -- improve accuracy by helping estimators remember all necessary components and use consistent pricing. Once an estimate is approved, the system automatically creates a Job Cost record that files all cost codes in the proper categories. This saves about 100 hours per year for data entry. Integration with Inventory enables us to easily allocate inventory to the job," Wright said.

Twenty to thirty percent of Hunter-Davisson's business is service and preventative maintenance. For that, the firm needs parts supplied by vendors; Sage Timberline Office software helps them track parts -- what is actually used, unused and what can be returned to the vendor. Consequently, they now have a better and more collaborative relationship with their vendors.

"We use Sage Timberline Office to manage all aspects of our service business. For example, when a customer needs preventative maintenance, we can instantly look up the parts each customer needs, generate a work order with an attached parts list and send it electronically to our supplier, who gets the parts ready for our technician to pick up," Wright said. "Because we no longer need to stock these parts in inventory, we save $3,000 in inventory costs for filters alone, reduce our warehouse requirements, and save about four hours per week receiving shipments, stocking shelves, and pulling parts for jobs. Vendors benefit because they don't have to load their trucks and drop off the parts so we've improved our vendor relationships as well."

Sage Software has a growing portfolio of business management solutions specifically tailored for the construction and real estate industries. The portfolio is designed to provide support through the growth cycle of a business and includes: Peachtree by Sage Premium Accounting for Construction and Sage Master Builder. For medium to large companies, Sage Timberline Office offers integrated financial, operations and estimating software and provides the most sophisticated level of functionality in the Sage Software portfolio of construction solutions.

About Sage Software

Sage Software supports the needs, challenges and dreams of more than 2.8 million small and mid-sized business customers in North America through easy-to-use, scalable and customizable software and services. Our products support accounting, operations, customer relationship management, human resources, time tracking, merchant services and the specialized needs of the construction, distribution, healthcare, manufacturing, nonprofit and real estate industries. Sage Software is a subsidiary of The Sage Group plc, a leading international supplier of accounting and business management software solutions and related products and services for small and mid-sized businesses. Formed in 1981, Sage was floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1989 and the Group now has 5.5 million customers and employs over 13,900 people worldwide. For more information, please visit the Web site at www.sagesoftware.com/moreinfo or call (866) 308-2378.

Contact Information: Press Contact: Traci Williams Sage Software 503-439-5919 traci.williams@sage.com