Wireless equipment supplier 4RF is a test case of scalability in business software. In five years, the Wellington company has expanded from five to 85 staff, opened offices as far afield as Florida in the US, Malaysia, the Philippines, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom and secured customers in 45 countries.
Its line of digital microwave radio equipment is sold as an ASDL extender and provides rural and remote access to broadband, as well as being used for inter-exchange communications.
Throughout its life, 4RF has relied on the same business software, Sage Accpac.
Beginning with the basic general ledger, accounts payable and accounts receivable suite, the company soon chose to interface this with the Misys manufacturing system. It is currently evaluating a system manager module, chiefly to track returns and maintenance of its products, says IT systems administrator James Ginnane. It is also looking at moving into CRM with the AccPac product.
4RF looked at introducing a CRM solution about a year ago, Ginnane says but it could not implement it at the time for budgetary reasons. The company now hopes to implement CRM by the end of this year.
AccPac has grown with the company, he says and from the point of view of IT has proved easy to maintain and grow, particularly when it comes to assigning appropriate rights of access to different departments, he says. 4RF only has a two-person IT team, so benefits from ease of maintenance and use.
In August, 4RF annouced it had received $6 million investment to fuel expansion into new markets as well as to increase its manufacturing capability.