AdvancedWare Corporation

FastTax meets customers’ eCommerce needs quickly and accurately

A specialized market with specific invoicing needs

AdvancedWare’s customers are primarily in manufacturing. Many of them want to add on eCommerce functionality and access their order data without being logged-in to their ERP system. AdvancedWare builds tools to help these companies view their eCommerce data on any device—via the web, on tablets, or using their smartphones.

AdvancedWare’s customers are geographically dispersed and use Service Objects’ DOTS FastTax in a couple different ways. First, when an order is placed, the sales tax is automatically calculated to ensure accuracy. Secondarily, FastTax may be used when an invoice is sent out, since some orders have large lead times and months can pass between when an order is placed and when the invoice is sent. In both cases, FastTax provides the most accurate and up-to-date tax rates for the customer’s location.

Service Objects’ commitment to providing outstanding support gives me the confidence to put their FastTax solution at the center of our customer implementations.

Michael Serrato

President, AdvancedWare

The key factors:
Accuracy and Performance

AdvancedWare was previously using a competitive solution to automate sales tax calculation, but its error rate was too high to be reliable. Since replacing this vendor with Service Objects, their reliability has dramatically improved due to the superior location data that the FastTax API utilizes. The response time—as fast as 100 milliseconds—was also a key performance metric.

In a world where tax jurisdictions can even vary at the municipality level, our close integration between location accuracy and up-to-date tax data was a critical factor for AdvancedWare. When an address is provided, FastTax uses Service Objects’ DOTS Address Validation service to establish address correctness and ZIP+4. Even when an address is not available, the service can use postal code, city/state, or city/county/state to determine location. FastTax then uses this location to identify tax jurisdictions and boundaries, resolve address issues, provide alternate city names, and eliminate problems associated with different rates in incorporated vs. unincorporated areas.

A relationship built on excellent support

Michael Serrato, AdvancedWare’s President, made it clear that given their mission-critical, API-based solutions, Service Objects’ support reputation weighed heavily in their decision—and so far, they haven’t been disappointed. “Ease of implementation was a key factor in choosing Service Objects. On the rare occasion that a support incident arose, Service Objects’ response time was awesome. The turnaround time to resolve issues was extremely quick, and the engineers were all very friendly and helpful.”

He went on to note how important it is for AdvancedWare to have a partner they could count on. “Our customers look to AdvancedWare to be their one-stop custom eCommerce platform, and FastTax is an important part of that solution. By having 99.999% server uptime guarantees, I am confident that our customers will not experience downtime that could result in lost business. I also appreciate the proactive maintenance notifications that are sent out several days in advance. This allows us to be make any adjustments necessary and avoid unforeseen service interruptions.”

Building a strong partnership

AdvancedWare feels that their company and Service Objects share a common focus on customers, and according to Serrato all of their new installations will be utilizing FastTax for automating sales tax collection. “AdvancedWare Corporation’s motto is delivering exceptional services and software every time, and our level of service is what differentiates us from our competition. Service Objects’ commitment to providing outstanding support gives me the confidence to put their FastTax solution at the center of our customer implementations.”

About AdvancedWare

Irvine, California-based AdvancedWare Corporation provides a comprehensive set of products and services to hundreds of companies using both legacy and new state-of-the-art Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Systems. AdvancedWare's solutions are built with real-time integration and specialize in implementing e-commerce, deploying smartphone solutions, automating seamless sales tax calculations, and streamlining business processes that interface with ERP systems.