Tidal Power Services

Tidal Power Services (TPS) is an electrical testing company serving clients in the petrochemical, utility, and power generation markets. With multiple field offices throughout Texas and Louisiana, TPS employs more than 140 field technicians, engineers, and support personnel along the U.S. Gulf Coast.

With an expanding volume of projects to manage, TPS reached the point where its QuickBooks accounting software could no longer keep pace. TPS selected Acumatica and NexTec Group to deliver a flexible and scalable foundation for future growth.

Manual processes hamper project visibility

“Our old processes were very manual in nature, so we had very little visibility from a project management and project lead standpoint,” says Trey Thevenet, COO, Tidal Power Services. “We didn’t know what we didn’t know.”

“We were previously using QuickBooks, and it was a very manual process, so we were behind on invoicing and everything was manually entered,” Pam Thompson, CFO, Tidal Power explains. “Time entry for our technicians in the field was actually disconnected from QuickBooks. So, there was a lot of manual entry, importing of activities and data between our timekeeping system and QuickBooks.”

Acumatica brings it all together

After doing research and walking through a demo, TPS made the decision to replace QuickBooks with Acumatica.

Simplicity was another factor, Thevenet explains: “A lot of the projects we do are very fast paced. They may start and end in a 24 to 48-hour period. Some of the other platforms we looked at required a lot more input on the front end, which was really unnecessary for us for a two-day project.”

With Acumatica, “Everything is in a single solution,” Thompson says. “Time is entered, it’s released. We actually have our customer rates embedded in the system. Depending on which customer is tied to which project, when we invoice it, that’s 100% different than QuickBooks.”

Choosing the right partner for the future

“To be totally honest, we actually selected our first Acumatica partner for the implementation, and we switched [to NexTec Group] right after we went live because that partner was not performing at the level and providing what we needed. Just the depth of knowledge wasn’t there,” Thompson explains.

“When we selected our second partner, we went into it with a lot of skepticism and wanted a partner that had a really deep bench, primarily because maybe we only have, you know, seven things implemented today, but that doesn’t mean we don’t want to bring on more modules and be able to be more robust in the future as we continue to grow and get comfortable with the system.”

“I think NexTec is a really good partner because they listen to you, and I think we’re a little gun shy because we had a lot of customizations going into our go-live from our previous partner, and that actually did us a lot of disservice when we tried to upgrade to the latest version. Every time we talked to NexTec, they understand that we do not want any customizations, we want it out of the box.”

Benefits, results and ROI

With Acumatica, Tidal Power Services has seen the following benefits and results:

Managing project costs in real time – “Previously, we were probably four or five weeks behind on everything,” says Thevenet. “You know, getting change orders and meeting our customers’ expectations for accurate project costs has been probably the single best functionality that we’ve gained, and it’s really helped our business and helped our customers too.”

Streamlined Customer Billing – “For me, it’s the ease of the invoicing of the customers because our customers are very demanding on how they want an invoice delivered to them and the timing of that delivery, as well as all the backup that’s required,” says Thompson. “And it is all within the system. So, we attach the invoices, we attach all the AP bills. It makes it super easy for the billing team because every project is treated exactly the same. So, it’s really helped us streamline that process.”

A Scalable Platform for Growth – “In QuickBooks, we probably ran about a little less than 1,000 projects a year,” says Thompson. “Now we run almost 1,400 projects a year. So, a lot of it is the way we set projects up in Acumatica. Plus, I mean, our business has grown tremendously, and we’ve been able to take that on because of Acumatica.”

The road ahead

TPS has been on Acumatica for over three years and the team continues to expand its use of the software. Next on the journey is implementing CRM to help the sales team on the quoting side. The company also plans to use Acumatica to empower its project managers with more “in-your-face” information and more efficient day-to-day prioritization of tasks. NexTec continues to guide the project as a trusted partner.