DWD and Sage Intacct help AVG cut close time to nine days and build confidence in the numbers.
The Challenge
When Chris Frantz joined as CFO in August 2025, AVG’s books didn’t hold up to scrutiny. Reporting relied on Microsoft Dynamics, spread across seven or eight disconnected sets of books that never fully reconciled. A consolidated, accurate financial picture was nearly impossible to produce.
The Solution
Chris had already solved this exact problem once before, at a previous eye care company backed by the same private equity ownership model. He turned again to DWD Technology Group, this time steering more of the Sage Intacct implementation himself, with DWD blueprinting the structure and staying close throughout.
The Results
With Sage Intacct providing a consistent multi-entity structure, AVG now closes in nine days and has financials leadership can trust.
- Cut month-end close from 30+ days to 9
- Established consolidated financials AVG leadership can trust
- Avoided adding a planned accounts payable position
- Improved clinic-level visibility into wages, revenue, and profitability
- Completed the implementation at roughly one-tenth the cost of a prior Dynamics rollout
About American Vision Group
American Vision Group is a management services organization supporting a network of doctor-owned ophthalmology clinics across South Florida. The practices span general ophthalmology, retina, and several other specialties within eye care. Partially physician-owned and partially backed by private equity, AVG is on a growth path, with acquisitions on the horizon as it builds toward its next stage of ownership.
Location: South Florida, USA
Sage Partner: DWD Technology Group
Industry: Healthcare/Ophthalmology (Management Services Organization)
A Clearer View of the Business
American Vision Group supports a network of doctor-owned ophthalmology practices across South Florida, handling the business infrastructure behind specialties ranging from general ophthalmology to retina care. AVG runs the business side, and the company itself is owned by a mix of those doctors and private equity, with growth through acquisition part of the long-term plan.
This kind of structure creates real pressure on the finance team. With physician owners, private equity backing, and acquisitions part of the long-term plan, AVG needed financials that could withstand scrutiny and support increasingly complex decisions. When Chris Frantz joined AVG as CFO in August 2025, he found a finance operation that couldn’t yet deliver any of that.
A familiar problem, a faster fix
AVG was running on Microsoft Dynamics, split across seven or eight separate sets of books that had never been fully consolidated. Getting a company-wide picture meant running individual reports and stitching them together by hand.
“We never had an accurate set of financials prior to Sage Intacct,” Chris says. “They never had a full three-statement report that all tied together and made sense.”
He didn’t need long to recognize the pattern. Chris had spent years at a previous eye care company under a similar private-equity-backed ownership structure, where he’d built the finance function from scratch and eventually led a migration off Sage 100 onto Sage Intacct. He hadn’t selected Sage Intacct at the previous company, but he had lived through the implementation and knew what the platform could do.
“What I liked about Sage Intacct is that it was, honestly, and I don’t mean this in a bad way, it almost seems bare bones when you first look at it,” he says. “It’s very intuitive, it’s very straight to the point, but then you can get as deep into it as you would like to.”
“Sage Intacct is very intuitive, it’s very straight to the point, but then you can get as deep into it as you would like to.”
That earlier project also connected him with DWD Technology Group, a relationship he carried into his new role. “I developed a relationship with these guys, and they knew me from my previous role,” Chris says. “They gave me the free rein to say, hey, we know that you already know how to do a lot of this stuff, get after it, and let us know how we can help. We implemented it in what seems like record time.”
Chris started at AVG in August with a mandate to evaluate the company’s systems. By the end of September, the decision was made. By October, AVG was live on Sage Intacct. “It was that bad, and it was that important for us to move over,” he says.
Built for a multi-entity, PE-backed structure
For an MSO managing multiple clinics under private equity ownership, the fit runs deeper than industry. “It’s less about vision specifically, or even healthcare specifically, and more about how the private equity world works,”
Frantz says. Sage Intacct’s dimensions let AVG track expenses by clinic, by legal entity, or rolled up across the whole organization, replacing a Dynamics setup where the same account number could mean something different from one company to the next.
“That caused a huge headache with consolidating,” he says. Now, one location’s numbers can be viewed on their own or merged with the MSO’s shared costs to see true clinic-level profitability.
The connection holds for investor reporting too. AVG’s investors also need to see the business through different reporting lenses. One-time costs, acquisition-related items, and other management adjustments may need to be viewed separately from day-to-day operating performance.
Chris had tried to build something similar in Dynamics, where consultants quoted steep fees for a feature that never quite worked. In Sage Intacct, DWD pointed him to a built-in one: user-defined books. “It’s a quick feature that you turn on within Sage, and it allows us to layer in extra sets of books on top of our normal reporting,” Chris says. “That’s instrumental to the way that I use our financials, and it’s been a perfect setup. That was something DWD brainstormed with us.”
Faster closes, sharper decisions
The operational gains followed quickly. AVG’s close now runs nine days, down from a process that used to stretch a month previously, with some periods taking two or even three months to stabilize. Recurring journal entries and automated intercompany transactions did much of the work.
AVG’s close now runs nine days, down from a process that used to stretch a month previously
Speed wasn’t the only benefit. With reliable, timely numbers, Chris’s team started catching problems it never used to see. Reviewing wage expenses as a share of revenue at one facility, he noticed payroll creeping up while revenue held flat. “That happened more as a feeling previously,” he says. “Now it’s data-driven, and they can see it on paper.” The operations team dug in to check for overstaffing and overtime, and leadership acted immediately, informed by the numbers rather than a hunch.
During a recent review, Chris walked AVG’s CEO through a live Sage Intacct report. “He stepped back and said, ‘I love Sage,'” Chris recalls. “He doesn’t log in himself, but he knows we’re able to get more visibility. Sage is the backbone to a lot of what we’re doing, but there’s a ton of process improvement happening around it too.”
That process improvement has already paid for itself. Chris vetoed a planned accounts payable hire early on, confident the team could handle the workload with better tools instead, and an integration with Ramp has sped up how AVG processes payables and manages cash flow.
The Sage Intacct implementation itself came in at roughly a tenth of what the earlier Dynamics rollout had cost. “That’s significantly less expensive,” Chris says. “I don’t know if that’s a driver of DWD or Sage, or probably a combination of both.”
A partner who sees the bigger picture
Chris credits DWD’s staff, many of them CPAs, with understanding both the software and the finance function it supports.
“They took a step back and listened to what it is we were trying to do,” he says. “They knew we were trying to scale, they knew what our existing structure looked like, and they did a really nice job helping us blueprint what it should look like.”
He’s since referred DWD to other private equity contacts. “They’re realistic. They’re not going to overpromise. They’re quick to respond, and they’re as informal or as formal as you want them to be.”
Before the next acquisition arrives, Chris is using the current window to keep strengthening the finance operation: automating more of AP, expanding bank reconciliation, and building allocations that will reduce manual journal entries. When growth resumes, he expects AVG to absorb additional entities without expanding the finance team at the same rate.
“It’s been universally accepted that this move over has given us more confidence in our books than we’ve ever had,” Chris says. “It’s been a game changer.”
Ready to take the next step? DWD is here to help.
Sage Intacct’s powerful suite of tools and features simplify financial processes, enable better decision-making, and provide actionable insights through advanced tracking of KPIs.
If that sounds like what you need to better manage your finances and boost operational efficiency, why not take the next step?
DWD offers a complimentary Software Needs Assessment to help identify your businesses needs and match you with the perfect software solution. Our team is here to help guide you, ensuring you get the most out of your investment.
About the Author: Logan Lemon, CPA
