A national bicycle parts manufacturer worried when a major competitor spent $225,000 to purchase
a new IBM AS/400 minicomputer and accounting system. The owner insisted on getting an equivalent system to feel confident about his accounting system. Being knowledgeable in information systems, and the accounting,
the company controller was very interested in saving money.
He worked closely with Applied Computer Online Services to design a powerful, reliable, and well-supported accounting system.
Fortunately, there was a detail comparison study conducted by a PC/DEC Magazine analyzing accounting systems on IBM PC Local
Area Network vs. minicomputer systems. The report concluded that a $50K worth of Novell LAN system will provide the
same computing performance as a $5.5M
DEC mini computer in accounting. After two months of intense discussion and getting a 100% guarantee from us,
the owner finally agreed to go with Novell LAN and Computer Associates' ACCPAC PLUS accounting software.
Two weeks later, the new system was up and running with about 40 workstations attached to the file server. The total cost for this project was $25,000
Later, in a company party, the owner revealed that the competitor's system only had five workstations and that the AS/400 system was "still not working properly".
That was four months after the competitor installed the AS/400.