Thirty years of records, moved.
Westminster Speed & Sound, Westminster, Maryland. In business since 1969 and serving its third generation of customers — the most awarded vehicle technology specialist in the Mid-Atlantic, with divisions across audio, security, appearance, safety, and truck accessories. Mark Miller, CEO.
The before
Westminster had run TSS since 1997. Thirty years on one program breeds workarounds, and one of them says it all: before placing a vendor order, an employee walked up to the stockroom and hand-counted that vendor's product, because the on-hand numbers in the software couldn't be trusted. A few hours every month, spent double-checking a computer.
The wall
Mark's biggest worry was the invoices. Customer names and numbers would move to a new system — thirty years of what those customers had bought and had installed would not. He'd be keeping TSS alive in a corner forever, just to look things up.
The break
1sixty8 — maker of Manifold, the new system Westminster chose — built a direct importer from scratch for the job, with Richard Basler as the go-between on the Manifold side. It was the first importer he had seen in eleven years around this industry's software that could carry invoices from one program into another. The wall Mark assumed he'd live with came down.
The wobble — because there's always one
Manifold was weeks old, and new software means bugs to work through before a single record moves. Some imported invoices behaved differently than native ones, and Richard worked those issues with the vendor. Then, near cutover, the TSS server computer rebooted on its own and the final backup wouldn't run. The migration went ahead on a backup 24 hours old, and the team re-entered the missing day of invoices by hand.
The after
Two weeks in, the shop was up and writing tickets — thirty years of history inside Manifold, none of it left behind in a corner. In Richard's words, things were going pretty well.
Where Mark stands
He was glad to have Richard there — especially where things didn't go as smoothly as hoped. He complimented how level-headed and focused Richard stayed when the server went wonky, and said it was great having him as the go-between, managing Mitch, his contact at 1sixty8, on the Manifold side. And he sees a real need for retailers to use Richard's services — especially shops on TSS considering a move.
Your records can make the same trip.
Say what system you're on and how far back your history goes — you'll get a plain answer on what comes across.
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