Corporate Profile
Headquarters
East Meadow, NY

Type of Business
Real estate research and expediting firm

Territory
Nassau and Suffolk counties, New York

Number of Employees
18

Annual Revenue
$800,000

System Profile
Computer System
Compaq, Acer

Operating System
DOS/Windows

BusinessWorks Modules in Use
General Ledger
Accounts Payable
Accounts Receivable
Payroll
Order Entry

Application
General accounting, proposal development, order processing, payroll, invoicing, mailing labels, quotations

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When Bivone launched RMB in 1985, he brought with him only his business background and a keen sense of direction in navigating municipal corridors. Although he lacked bookkeeping experience, Bivone had no trouble managing the 20 or so accounts the company had during its early years. But as the company began to grow, he realized the need for a capable accounting and client tracking system.

Bivone, who describes himself as a “letter-oriented person,” would develop individual job bids by dictating to an assistant a list of all items RMB would provide, then calculating the projected cost using an AppleWorks spreadsheet he ran on his Apple IIE computer. As the company began to grow, the process of closing the books became an eight-hour ordeal each month.

“Once we converted to BusinessWorks, our growth rate exploded,” says Bivone. “BusinessWorks became such a key part of our business that to this day I could not operate without it. BusinessWorks lets me know at any second of the day the status of individual jobs and, overall, the status of my company financially.”

Today, RMB Drafting Services routinely performs more than 1,000 jobs per year, using the latest version of BusinessWorks on a DOS-based Novell network of 12 DTK and Magnavox PCs linked to a Compaq server. The company has plans to upgrade to a new Compaq Pentium server with Compaq and Acer workstations, and is correspondingly upgrading to the latest Windows version of BusinessWorks.

The fiscal management capabilities of BusinessWorks enabled Bivone to start two other companies: Electrical Inspectors Inc., which acts as a deputized agent for cities wishing to contract out electrical inspection services; and RMB Development Consultants Inc., which handles New York-area building permit and occupancy certification expediting. RMB Development Consultants provides advice and assistance to architectural and development firms that are based in other cities but which have construction projects in the New York area. The three enterprises now employ 18 staff members. Electrical Inspectors alone now accounts for 5,000 jobs a year.

To this day, Richard Bivone does his own payroll, using BusinessWorks.

“As president, I need to know where the company’s money is and monitor how much is being spent monthly,” says Bivone, who insists he lacks much accounting expertise. “BusinessWorks has helped immensely with payroll because it physically does accounting of taxes. Our accountant says it’s never been incorrect. It’s very accurate.”

Bivone says he runs payroll in 15 minutes. He says the latest implementation of the BusinessWorks invoicing module hit a “home run” with RMB, and he particularly praises the ability of the software to generate cost estimates that he figured by hand in the old days.

“Now we can pull up a quote while a client is on the phone, and with a new computer network will give each of our sales people the ability to fax a quote immediately from their workstation,” says Bivone.

And what does RMB’s accountant think of all this?

Bivone’s answer says it all. “He now recommends BusinessWorks to his clients.”