As Straightaway continued expanding through acquisitions, leadership recognized the need for an ERP system that could better support a complex, multi-entity business structure and provide a scalable financial foundation for future growth.

According to Michael Randall, Straightaway’s VP Corporate Controller, their repair shops nationwide used a variety of accounting solutions. Without uniformity across locations, Straightaway lacked day-to-day visibility, and the company spent an extraordinary amount of time piecing together a unified view of financial performance.

Louie Psallidas, CFO at Straightaway, said they had a top ten list of must-haves as they sought new software. Several at the top of that list were:

• Advanced multi-entity reporting capabilities
• Ability to merge GAAP and pro forma data (and pivot between them)
• Point-of-sale interface
• Connectivity to financial institutions and other software systems
• Payroll interface
• Strong partner to guide implementation

Randall and Psallidas evaluated multiple ERP platforms and ultimately selected Sage Intacct because it aligned well with their operational and financial requirements and gave them confidence that the solution could support future growth.

They chose Cargas as their implementation partner for several reasons, including trust built during the sales process, the Cargas team’s understanding of Sage Intacct’s capabilities and how it could help them overcome their challenges, and Cargas’ strong focus on customer training.

“Cargas just really stood out as being genuine and being able to offer the service we wanted and the training approach that we wanted to put in place,” shared Randall.

Cargas worked with Straightaway to zero in on the company’s pain points and develop a plan for how to resolve them.

CFO Louie Psallidas said that, as a brand-new organization, none of the founders had ever been through an ERP implementation.

“Change management was going to be critical,” he shared. “What impressed me about Cargas was the level of detail that they put into the scope of work. It was extraordinarily detailed and demonstrated a strong command of what we were going to need in this process. And they were willing to be hands-on.”

Randall explained that because different locations did things differently, Cargas developed a tailored plan for each group the company brought onboard to the new solution.

“The cadence was to implement one every one to two months, making sure that we were 100% prepared every time we brought a new group on,” he shared.

The implementation began on January 1, 2025, and Straightaway Tire & Auto went live for all repair shops on October 1, 2025.

As the company acquires new repair shops, it works with Cargas to transition them to the solution.

According to Randall, “Previously, we had to go out to six different sources to get answers to what should have been quick, clear questions. Then we’d have to try to piece it all together. It was very frustrating. We spent hours and hours consolidating data at the end of the month as we tried to keep things consistent across groups and look at things in a centralized way.”

Psallidas added that decentralization created very long close cycles, often 21+ days, before they could close and consolidate their books and see their actual results. Moreover, the company struggled to efficiently pull data samples needed for year-end audits.

The inability to access data when they needed it was restrictive.

“At our growth pace from 2023 to today, we needed answers about what’s happening in the business in real time. That just wasn’t possible before,” Psallidas said.

With Sage Intacct, the company now has a sustainable solution that gives them access to up-to-date information—a necessity in today’s data-driven world.

“The ability to produce pro forma financial information that goes back as far as we have data for in essentially real time—and to be able to cut that data in lots of different ways is powerful in a private equity environment where lots of people review our numbers,” shared Psallidas.