"The container business and the chassis business are two separate entities and they are also managed separately," explains James J. Santoriello, Interpool's controller. "What we were looking for in our financial software was the ability to look at the financial results of the two companies separately and then have them consolidated in a very efficient manner. For instance, when we look at our consolidated results at the end of 1998, it's a requirement of our Annual Report disclosures that we break out different segments of our business. With the right system we can get those journal results -- meaning an income statement and a balance sheet -- on-line and in real-time, basically with the push of a button.

"With our old GL, the way we generated financial results was by getting the GL for each company and putting those numbers into Lotus or Excel spreadsheets. Obviously, people had to take their time inputting everything into the system. With Multiview, the process is completely automated. We can spend 20% of our time compiling the numbers and 80% of our time reviewing them, instead of the other way around which is how it used to be."

Not only must financials be integrated across lines-of-business, they must also be integrated across Interpool's globally distributed operations. In the past, each office -- whether in Basel or Barbados -- used its own general ledger system, and then the information from those reports was re-entered manually at headquarters. "Multiview allows us to use a standardized financial reporting package for international subsidiaries," Santoriello says. "Offices will enter their financials in a standard Excel format which Multiview can upload and consolidate automatically.

"I think we'll see a lot of efficiencies in workflow and people flow," Santoriello says. "I'm also hoping to recognize some efficiencies in the audit process."

Efficient Implementation Too

But perhaps the most efficient part of working with Multiview was the ease of implementation. Santoriello recounts how it went: "The process probably started in October. Multiview allowed us to take a demo of their software and put it on our server down here. It was extremely important to me that our staff all have an opportunity to touch and feel the system. We had several conference calls to address questions and concerns. Obviously, they were addressed to our satisfaction and Interpool made the decision to go forward and start a new project with Multiview.

"That decision was made around December 21st of 1998. At that time we put together an extremely aggressive implementation schedule which called for us going live April 1st, 1999. Through coordination with Multiview and the dedication of all our coworkers here, we were able to meet that schedule."

Getting AP up, Santoriello notes, was Interpool's first priority. "Accounts Payable is kind of the front line because once you go live, checks have to start going out right away, whereas April's financial reports generally wouldn't come out until the second week of May." Complicating the situation was the fact that Interpool not only has to do its own accounts payables, but also provides this service for other companies -- in particular chassis and container pools -- which contract with Interpool to do their accounts payables as well. These pools consist of containers and chassis typically owned by shipping companies and kept on standby at various ports around the world.

"Our actual conversion took place over Easter weekend," Santoriello recalls. "We were down for that weekend as the conversion was taking place and back up and running the following Tuesday. It was a weekend when all our people were on call, but when none of them had to come in. Multiview handled the history conversion for us at their location up in Canada. We overnighted the backup via tape to Multiview on Friday; they worked through the weekend, and overnighted the conversion back to us on Monday on CD. All they asked of us was that they be able to get in touch with us if they needed to. Not one individual's Easter weekend was interrupted because they had to come into the office."

Interpools' Director of MIS, Herb Mertz, credits Multiview features for making the implementation a smooth one. "It was very delicate in that we have to bring hundreds of thousands of records from the old system into the new. Multiview has a very very nice set of input functions. The people in Accounting could take ownership of the project, and very effectively too."