Why choose our software?

Why should your company consider buying a system from AOCG? We think that there are several reasons, including: support, stability, features, customer satisfaction, customization, performance, and price.

Of all these reasons, we feel the most important is support. Before a software company can offer the highest level of support, it must have employees with the requisite expertise. Most computer companies that sell Job Cost software don’t have programmers who are intimately familiar with the software they sell. The programs they sell and install were written by other companies. This means that they are limited in the level of support they can provide. At AOCG, we have programmers who not only can install and support our software, but who are familiar with the underlying program code. This means that there are no "unsolved mysteries." If a problem occurs, in virtually all cases, we not only can help correct the problem without resorting to restoring backups and losing data, but we can also explain exactly why the problem occurred, and how to keep it from occurring again. Industry studies have shown that over 70% of all technical support calls are not handled to the customer’s satisfaction. Why? Because most computer companies have unqualified personnel, usually non-programmers, handling support issues. They either don’t have qualified programmers, or they don’t let their customers have access to these "valuable" employees. Therefore, the quality of support suffers. At AOCG, we have the opposite approach. We think supporting our existing customers takes precedence over making new sales, and all of our customers have access to our programming staff, including our senior software developer, who has over twenty years experience working on Accounting and Job Cost software.

How do many of our competitors deal with unresolved problems? By restoring backups and reinstalling software. Does this make sense for the customer? No, because often data loss and data corruption problems cannot be identified when they happen. They show up later. Restoring an old backup on a multi-user system may mean multiple users losing days or weeks of work. Reinstalling software is expensive and often doesn’t keep the same problem from recurring.

This leads to a major issue: stability. Our software is in constant use by hundreds of users on a daily basis. We have none of the stability issues common to accounting programs written to run directly under Windows (our software is compatible with Windows, but runs on a Linux server). We have had no "crashes" or loss of data due to program glitches, Windows upgrades, viruses, etc. This is because our software is based on the Linux operating system, which is legendary for its stability. Although users sometimes make mistakes or need assistance, even these issues are rare. We think that we have the most stable, most secure Job Cost software on the market. Some of our competitors’ programs are not as stable, and are subject to mysterious lockups, crashes, General Protection Faults, and even loss of data.  Worse than that, their tech support people can't help their customers when these things happen, or explain how to keep them from happening in the future.

On the subject of features: our software consists of over 2,000 individual programs with advanced features such as Fully Electronic 401(k), Fully Electronic Bank Reconciliation, Fully Electronic Direct Deposit, Electronic New Hire Reports, Electronic SUTA Reports, Magnetic Media W-2's, Automatic Business Tax Reports by Job County/City, Employee Drug Testing, and much more. We also have an Estimating module which integrates with our Job Cost system.

When prospective customers start reviewing software features, they are often perplexed. How do you know that a particular program will work for your company? Although it would literally take days for us to explain all the features of our software, we think that there is an easier approach. We think that customer satisfaction is the best gauge of a computer company and its software. We have customers who have been using our software for 20 years who have never lost an hour's worth of data or been unable to do a payroll or a billing due to a computer problem.  

Why should your company worry about customization? It may very well be that this will not be an issue for your company. However, our software can be customized in any way necessary to meet your company’s needs. Most of our competitors' programs cannot. They may be able to create a special report, but they can’t change the underlying program code. What advantage does customization offer? It lets us tailor our software to fit your company. If you do something a little different from your competitors, and this gives you a competitive advantage, or differentiates you in a positive way, why change to fit the requirements of a programmer who never considered your company when the software was originally written? Who knows more about your business and your customers than you do? It is worth noting that most large, successful companies do not buy "generic" software and change their business operations to fit the software. The country’s largest and most successful construction companies use programs like J. D. Edwards, which are customizable. These programs usually cost anywhere from $100,000 to several million dollars, depending on the size of the construction company. We have been told by some of our customers who are familiar with these programs that our software compares very favorably, although our prices are much lower. Finally, the ability to customize software is like an insurance policy: it helps guarantee that you won’t one day have to consider changing accounting software due to changes in your business, or due to customer demands. We have had several of our customers establish relationships with customers like HCA and South Central Bell, and these companies have construction audit departments and special requirements which require custom programming. We have even had HCA auditors in the past recommend our software to construction companies, and that is high praise indeed.

Another important consideration is performance. Some of the accounting software on the market is notoriously slow. The bigger the accounting files get, the slower the software gets. If users complain about performance, often the only option is to buy new computers for everyone. And even if you have acceptable performance today, when you install tomorrow’s "upgrade" you may find that your computers are suddenly obsolete. The constant need to upgrade software and hardware simply to perform normal accounting functions is one of the hidden costs of many accounting programs. Fortunately, our software will work on any PC, from a 386 up, at much faster rates of speed than many of our competitors’ programs will run on the fastest PC on the market. This is due to the fact that our software runs on a Linux server, and is optimized for performance. Our software can be used on virtually any PC, and can be accessed easily from a PC running any version of Windows.

Last, but not least, price is always important. Unfortunately, many of the costs of accounting programs are "hidden" or at least not readily apparent. The initial costs are (hopefully) obvious, but the costs of upgrading, adding users and simply keeping the software running are not. Here is how our software pricing differs from the norm. First, we don’t price our software by the module. If you have a 4-user system, all 4 users have access to all modules, unless you don’t want certain employees to have access to certain modules, such as Payroll. Systems which are priced by the module suddenly become unexpectedly expensive when you simply want to add a user and give that person access to multiple modules. This is especially a problem if your company is growing. What is worse is the fact that many software companies base their "maintenance" contracts on the total cost of all the modules you have purchased. If a company charges 15 to 30 percent of the total cost of the system in yearly fees, what starts out as an inexpensive system may quickly cost thousands of dollars per year to use. We simply don’t charge fees for our customers to continue to use the software they have already paid for. Our only required upgrade is a an end-of-year programming charge when the federal government changes tax tables, W-2's, 1099's, etc. The charge for these changes is normally $195, somewhat higher if there are extensive payroll changes required. If a customer wishes to upgrade to the latest version of our software, this is optional, at a flat rate which is not based on the original price of the system. And please keep in mind that these upgrades are optional. Most of our customers don’t upgrade every year. Many have only upgraded once or twice over the last twenty years! We still support all of these accounts. Another cost issue was touched on briefly in the preceding paragraph about performance: with other programs, you may have to continually replace your computer systems to be able to run the latest version of the accounting program. The hardware costs involved are just the "tip of the iceberg" because the labor to migrate user accounts, programs and data often costs much more than the hardware. Also, if your company is interested in integrating Estimating and Job Cost, be careful. Some software companies sell "tickler" versions of their software, which seem quite inexpensive. However, if they have a more advanced version which costs thousands of dollars more, the "tickler" version may simply be designed to get your business. When you need a critical function, you may be told that you need to upgrade to the "full" or "professional" or "Gold" or "Premium" version of the software. We only have one version of our software: the full program. In a nutshell, our software is probably the most cost effective software to use on a continual basis in its market category, which is small to medium-sized construction companies with revenues from one million to two hundred million dollars per year.

In the end, though, we think it all comes back to support. Companies that sell computer software will tell you all about their wonderful features. But what they don't often mention is support. In fact, just try to find the technical support phone number in most computer manuals! Many software vendors don't want you to call them. They want to sell to you, of course, but they want to end each transaction as quickly and painlessly as possible, so that they can make another sale. To dissuade you from actually using their on-site services, some of these companies have minimum charges of four hours at $95 per hour (or higher)! A ten-minute visit might cost $380 (or more). Many companies don’t handle support calls themselves. They will refer to you an 800 number; and we all know what that means: wasting your time on hold to talk to someone who you have never met, who knows and cares nothing about your business. Or they will give you some sort of electronic support: fax, Email, Internet. Unfortunately, these only address the most common problems: they seldom address your problem!

At Alpha Omega, we specialize in support. In fact, support is our business. Instead of trying to make a sale every day, we sell only when we have the time and personnel to support a new customer, and then we try to keep that customer's business forever. By the way, our minimum charge is 15 minutes at $105 per hour, or $26.25. And this is for a senior programmer, not a salesman or a glorified end-user. We typically offer a much higher level of support, often for a lower cost, and with more convenience for the user. Does our policy work? Yes. Once a customer selects us as their vendor, we typically have their business for good. And this is in an industry where users often change their software like socks.

Why is support so important? With a good computer system, you will soon have your company's finances, payroll, contracts, estimates and billings computerized. The benefits of being computerized are almost endless. But what will you do if your computer system goes down just when your payroll must be run? Or on bid day? Or when a billing must be done? In over twenty years of supporting construction companies, we are not aware of any DataTrac customer missing a payroll or a billing because of a computer problem. We think that’s pretty impressive, and we wonder if our competitors can say the same.

If you are a Nashville or Middle Tennessee company, AOCG can also provide our services on-site. This means that we can install your system and train your personnel at your company's offices. If you are located outside the Middle Tennessee area, we offer remote support via the Internet.  If you have a problem, we can access your system remotely through the Internet using modem, cable, DSL, ISDN or T-1 connections, and we can actually attach to your program window, examine an error message, fix the problem for you, then explain why the problem arose and how to avoid the error in the future.