Corporate logos are almost as common as sports insignia on casual clothing these days. Attire like t-shirts, golf shirts, caps and outerwear, as well as accessories like bags, towels and blankets emblazoned with a Fortune 500 company's latest positioning statement, make for great marketing tools and memorabilia.

One of the world's largest suppliers of these sporting goods to printers who print the insignia, Broder Bros., Plymouth, Mich., in fact processes 5,000 orders per day for new items, according to vice president and CFO Howard Morof.

But last year, when the company's growth burgeoned - sales were around $300 million - executives realized that the company had to put its old accounting system on the sidelines and start its next sales season with some new financial technology on its team.

"All of our software applications were home-grown for a long period of time," says Morof. "All of the development was in warehouse distribution and order fulfillment processes. But very little was done on the accounting and finance side, or the purchasing side. We needed to upgrade and integrate all of our processes."

After thoroughly researching the financial software market, the company tried out four software vendors for its financial management team. "We decided we would look for a purchasing and financial management package," says Morof. "Originally, it started out as a financial management package search and it expanded into purchasing."

The reason for that was simple: the 12-person accounting department had to verify the 11,000 stock-keeping units, or individual items, which moved through each of the company's five facilities to customers on a daily basis.

Morof and his colleagues put Navision Financials and three other major accounting software packages through the paces. "We ran through the demos, allowing users to get a touch and feel of the software. We did not choose Navision the first time. The software we did select failed to address our needs, which is moving information," he notes. "When it came to operating on a daily basis, the software failed miserably," says Morof.

"It could not effectively exchange information between our mainframe computer system and the software package. It became clear to us that it did not have the tool set to do what we needed. We threw it out."

So Navision was called back in and given the job. As far as Morof and his colleagues are concerned, Navision Financials made the all-star team for financial software packages.

Navision Financials is a fully-integrated, customizable 32-bit multi-user accounting and 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 management, foreign trade and contact management. It runs on Windows NT, Windows 95, OS/2, IBM AIX and HP UX platforms.

"We're moving 5,000 SKU's of data per day across the database," says Morof. "We needed to integrate so it would flow smoothly every day."

The company's mainframe, a Unix-based DEC Alpha, was linked to a Compaq Reliant Server running Navision Financials and linked to 12 PCs from Micron Technologies. "We called Navision back in during late November," recalls Morof. "We targeted a 'go live' date of spring. We hit it on May 4, at the beginning of the accounting period. What the other group couldn't get done, these guys (Navision) accomplished in a short period of time."

Morof says that the reason for the success is that the Navision Financials software "is built to integrate and move data back and forth in an outstanding fashion." He also notes that Navision's Solution Center, Frontline-US, Inc., Ann Arbor, Mich. (formerly known as Nohr & Associates), was able to quickly customize the software to fit Broder's processes.

The company has a 26-user license for Navision that is enabling Broder to perform profitability by customer analysis, as well as profitability by SKU, and profitability by vendor analyses. "That allows us to maintain a true layer of inventory. It is extremely precise," says Morof. "We're looking for a lot of decision support out of the software. We're asking a question of the system and getting appropriate answers."

What's next for the sporting goods giant? Kathy Nohr, president of Frontline-US, notes that purchasing, payables and general ledger accounting functions are now integrated in the system. But that is just what she calls "phase one" of the project. "Their sales order entry did not communicate with general ledger. That can be a problem," says Nohr. "There was a lot of duplication of effort."

"Phase two" of software upgrading is under way. They (Broder) are adding advanced inventory management and purchase forecasting, which will give them even greater decision support systems through Navision Financials. "They are a big company," says Nohr. "Their purchasing process is a big deal."