Overview:
In the semiconductor testing industry, things seem to move as fast as the telecommunications and computer technologies that are being measured. One of the leading players in this market is Advantest America, the world's largest supplier of automatic test equipment for the semiconductor industry.

 
Sage MAS 500

• eExecutive
• General Ledger
• Accounts Payable
• Purchase Order

In the semiconductor testing industry, things seem to move as fast as the telecommunications and computer technologies that are being measured. One of the leading players in this market is Advantest America, the world's largest supplier of automatic test equipment for the semiconductor industry.

Advantest's devices provide dynamic functional test systems for sophisticated computer and telecommunications technologies. These devices also include tools for measuring the chips used in mobile telecommunications and ultra high-speed optical telecommunications applications.

Advantest America R&D Center (ARD), located in Santa Clara, California, is the research and development arm of the company. ARD enjoys a high profile within its organization, as its parent invests a full 10 percent of total sales into R&D efforts, with the goal of deriving 30 percent of sales from new products.

Old System Bogged Down
At ARD, things move fast. But unfortunately, Advantest was not experiencing the same speed with the performance of its financial software. What the company needed was a package that would allow ARD to communicate with its parent in Japan and access the parent's database, accommodate the firm's expectations of future growth, and make the workload easier for ARD's finance people.

"The accounting software system that we had just couldn't keep up," says Clayton Conrad, IS manager at ARD. "It was slow and cumbersome. It kept locking on us, and it had problems when communicating with our parent's database."

Smart, Fast & Efficient
Conrad set out to find a new accounting package. After reviewing many systems, he discovered Sage MAS 500 ERP accounting software. He scheduled a live demonstration with an authorized Sage Software reseller and he hasn't looked back since.

Thanks to its new Sage MAS 500 system, ARD can now access its parent's database with just one touch of a button. Before, the job had required two people, working with two separate custom programs. As Conrad says, "Just this benefit alone has resulted in a tremendous boost in productivity."

ARD's migration to the new software was facilitated by its reseller, who converted accounts payable, accounts receivable, and general ledger data from Solomon IV tables to Sage MAS 500 tables.

"Although installing Sage MAS 500 is simple," says Conrad, "we couldn't have achieved such great results without our reseller. Their support ensured that we had full ODBC connectivity to Japan, which was no easy task. In addition, they figured out how to convert data from our old system, something that was almost impossible. And they did it on schedule."

With Sage MAS 500, ARD can now perform the standard accounting duties of a mid-sized office-primarily accounts payable and general ledger tasks-easily and effectively. The system also lets the company transmit and receive important financial data to and from corporate headquarters in Japan, quickly and efficiently.

"We received everything we were looking for," says Conrad. "An open standard for communicating with the database, the ability to handle ARD's anticipated expansion, and minimized user intervention, which has reduced our workload. We're very pleased with our choice."