1. American Contract Bridge League – Prophix story
Operating since: 1937
Head office: Horn Lake, Mississippi
Annual revenue: $16 million
Number of employees: > 150
G/L or ERP: JD Edwards World
Company website:
Company background:
The American Contract Bridge League is the largest contract bridge organization in North America. It promotes the game of bridge in the United States, Mexico, Bermuda, and Canada, and is a member of the World Bridge Federation.
Business problems that led to evaluating CPM, adopting Prophix:
Prior to purchasing Prophix, ACBL mainly used Excel to prepare their financial statements and perform budgeting and forecasting. This was very tedious and error prone. They were in need of the following:
1. Automation of their primary financial statements (balance sheet and cash flow).
2. A way to perform more in-depth personnel planning to accompany their budgets.
3. A centralized software program that everyone involved could access and use for budgeting, as opposed to dealing with dozens of excel files.

2. American Contract Bridge League – Prophix story
Their Prophix solution:
Prophix has provided a flexible and centralized reporting and analytical tool to guide decision making and analysis of financial performance. Specifically, the solution includes:
• A Financial model to streamline their budgeting and reporting requirements. This included automated balance sheet, P&L and cash flow statements.
• A direct connection to JD Edwards for nightly data imports.
• A personnel planning model which allows them to budget and report payroll-related expenses more efficiently.
Note: Natasha Brown, Accounting Manager (Prophix Admin) had this to say following the end-user training she facilitated: “All department managers love working in Prophix and think that the annual budgeting process is a lot easier than what they had before.”
CUSTOMER (NATASHA BROWN) INTERVIEW CONDUCTED MORE THAN 6 MONTHS POST-IMPLEMENTATION BY MARK BEHAR 10/31/2014:
How did you hear about Prophix?
She heard about it from her CFO, Joseph (Joe) Jones.
Which other CPM vendors did you evaluate?
Joe Jones might have looked at others, but she got involved once they were investigating Prophix.
What were your primary reasons for selecting Prophix?
Watched a custom demo put together by Steven King, with (sales rep) Cam Maxwell attending. Were drawn to the prospect of smooth integration with any accounting software. Ease of use for managers, who are not math or accounting experts. Simplicity of building templates. Accurate information and reporting. Excel filled with errors, frustration with formulas, too much improvisation.

3. American Contract Bridge League – Prophix story
CUSTOMER (NATASHA BROWN) INTERVIEW CONDUCTED MORE THAN 6 MONTHS POST-IMPLEMENTATION BY MARK BEHAR 10/31/2014:
What are your main sources of revenue?
765,000 bridge playing members, who pay annual membership fees. They produce their own bulletin. They record member “master points”. When members attend tournaments or 1 of 3 national events, they pay a fee.
What are your largest expenses?
Tournament directors serve as referees, accounting for the largest personnel expense—higher than head office employees.
How has Prophix helped to address the ACBL’s business challenges (specific to your industry)?
“All of our department managers love working in Prophix and think that the annual budgeting process is a lot easier than what they had before.”
Department managers love the drill across function, the ability to evaluate expenses in JD Edwards.
They can also understand their sources of revenues from their members.
Better understand their forecasts.
The tournament directors will try to build a tournament revenue model in Prophix to evaluate the revenues, potential expenses, and profitability of each tournament.
Personnel planning in Detailed Planning Manager (DPM) very important. Calculating salaries, additional 401k expenses, etc. Determining how they can better budget and forecast for departments and the company as a whole. They then determine which positions or position types to add, which areas of the company to address.
Natasha and Joe (the CFO) want to grant access to other managers and raise their level of involvement. They are also starting new processes and objectives.
“With Prophix, we are able to consistently provide our department managers with better financial projections. This information allows them to make more strategic decisions for their areas of the business.”

4. American Contract Bridge League – Prophix story
CUSTOMER (NATASHA BROWN) INTERVIEW CONDUCTED MORE THAN 6 MONTHS POST-IMPLEMENTATION BY MARK BEHAR 10/31/2014:
Now with your more accurate cash flow statement, have you started to conduct more strategic planning?
Joe, the CFO, still has some of our cash flow information in Excel. Will be moving more into Prophix over time. Have already started as of 10/31/2014.
Mark Behar recommended attending the user conference in May of 2015 to learn about this.
Mark also recommended speaking with Julie Lai from Educational Media Foundation to learn more about the possibilities for successful cash flow planning.
Are you aware of the Rewards program?
No. Mark explained to her.
On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely are you to recommend Prophix to others? 10

5. Supporting data: Life cycle Industry (choose all that apply)
☐ New implementation YES
Implementation date: Q1 2014
☐ Preexisting customer
Original implementation date: ________________
☐ Existing customer, upgrading
Industry (choose all that apply)
☐ Agriculture, forestry, and fishing
☐ Professional services
☐ Financial services
☐ Retail
☐ Wholesale and distribution
☐ Telecommunications
☐ Healthcare
☐ Utilities
☐ Education
☐ Architecture, engineering, and construction
☐ Life science
☐ Transportation and logistics
☐ Manufacturing
☐ High tech
☐ Media and entertainment
☐ Government
☐ Non-profit YES (membership organizations)

6. Capabilities at a glance:
☐ Budgeting YES
☐ Forecasting YES
☐ Reporting YES
☐ Strategic planning
☐ Financial consolidation
☐ Profitability analysis
☐ Personnel planning YES
☐ Utilization planning
☐ Project planning
☐ Revenue planning Planned
☐ Capital expenditures planning
☐ Cash flow planning YES (building as of 10/31/2014)
☐ Dashboards and scorecards
☐ Prophix Mobile
☐ Microsoft platform integration
☐ Cloud deployment