When it was started five years ago in its founder's basement in Orem, Utah, PowerQuest Corp. was just another software industry start-up with more promise than profits. Today, the company, whose sales last year leapt from $8.2 million to $25.8 million, is acknowledged by industry analysts as one of the fastest growing software companies in the U.S.

Founder Eric J. Ruff lured some of the best minds in programming away from the likes of Novell, WordPerfect, Microsoft, Corel and Gazelle Systems, enabling his company to make some fast moves into the hard-disk management and "cloning" software market for distributed workstation computing.

But PowerQuest's financial department did not have an accounting package that could keep pace with its phenomenal growth.

And until April Of 1997, this firm, one of the world's top 500 software developers, was still using Intuit Corp.'s QuickBooks software for its primary financial functions, such as accounts payable and general ledger accounting. "The program is more appropriate for a small start-up or a dentist's office," says Alan Hansen, vice president of finance at PowerQuest.

The environment was becoming less than pleasant in the financial department. Not only was QuickBooks designed for small companies, it was also a client-based software program in a world where client-server computing is a business requirement. "We had accountants clamoring to get onto our single-user system," recalls Hansen. 'We were really pinched."

Last spring, Hansen began a quest for the right financial software for his firm, one that could be networked and serve what would grow to be currently a 15-person accounting department that performed everything from general ledger accounting to accounts payable. 'For a long time, we thought we didn't have the time to go through a dog-and-pony show from each vendor out there," Hansen says. "But it got to the point where we had to make time.'

At first, he considered some of the major household names in the financial software industry, companies like Solomon, Platinum and Great Plains. Hansen even brought a number of value added resellers into his offices and had them pitch their products. But something was missing. "We didn't think the VARs we had heard from were going to be as responsive as we needed them to be," says Hansen.

Then one day in spring, he was reading an article in CFO magazine, the trade journal for chief financial officers. The publication touted a firm with which he had only a slight familiarity at the time: Navision Software. "The article said they were about to break through to the top ranks of the accounting software industry, and that they had a great VAR network," says Hansen. Motivated by the article, he called upon Gene Matthews, president of Insight Business Solutions, a Navision Solution Center based in Salt Lake City.

Matthews recalls how in just one afternoon he demonstrated Navision Financials software to the accounting team at PowerQuest. His intimate knowledge of the technology and his breezy style of doing business won over the PowerQuest personnel. Four weeks after meeting with Matthews, the Navision Financials software was up and running on the company's NT server. Navision Financials is a fully integrated, customizable 32-bit multi-user business management solution. It is based on a high-performance, client-server architecture, and functions include general ledger, accounts receivable, accounts payable, order entry, purchase order, bill of materials, payroll, human resources, foreign trade, contact management, manufacturing and e-commerce. It runs on Windows NT, Windows 95, OS/2, IBM AIX and HP UX platforms.

"Gene Matthews sold us on the product," says Hansen. "It is a strong product that has everything we need. With software like this, the VAR also really needs to be strong. You need support. And that was a primary factor in our decision. So we opted for them. From a cost standpoint, all of the other big names were in the same ballpark. But we are quite pleased with our decision. We've gotten all of the help we needed."

Installation of the Navision software on the NT server was quite simple, and once the few inevitable start-up glitches were resolved, the software provided smooth sailing for the accounting department. Now, on a daily basis, 12 of the 15 people in the accounting department at PowerQuest access the system for accounts payable and general ledger accounting. In addition to the accountants, senior management also uses Navision every day at PowerQuest.

"From a technical perspective the 'multi-user network functionality' of Navision is important to PowerQuest personnel. Also, tracking and reporting are key functions for us. Vendor management, aging reports, all of that works well. The interface is really strong, especially on the general ledger side. If I need to go in and get some numbers, it is easy," says Hansen.

PowerQuest still relies on its own in-house software program for receivables and customer management. The reason? As a manufacturer and marketer of prepackaged software for the retail market, PowerQuest has a large number of small sales on an annual basis. "But we would like to transition to Navision some day for those functions," he says.

That day may come quite soon, if growth continues at Its torrid pace at PowerQuest. The company's hard-disk management products, like Partition Magic and DriveCopy, are emerging as leaders in their field. other products, such as Drive Image and Drive Image Professional, cloning software tools used by IS managers in large corporations and educational institutions, are in increasing demand as well. Drive Image Professional lets IS managers who want to configure a number of workstations the same way make an image of a hard drive and cast it over the network to set up the workstations in a time-efficient manner.

"What is really exciting about Drive Image is that we launched the product in September of 1997, and after three months our retail product was the leader in that category over previously-established competitors," says Hansen. "That speaks quite well to how we are doing. We sell all of our products through CompUSA and other national and local reseller outlets. We also have a direct sales force making calls in-house, and they are doing some great things for us. We expect to see more of that in the future, and that requires a lot of financial management capability as well."

The privately-held company wants to be prepared should it ever decide to go public in the future, and wants Navision to go along for the ride, for the software program contains online analytical processing tools (OLAP) that make financial analysis fun for the user. "We think Navision will take care of us," says Hansen. "Last year was tremendous for us, and we see no limit to our growth."