The Organisation
This not-for-profit social enterprise organisation delivers a range of community and offender healthcare services on behalf of the NHS, Local Authority Public Health services and other partners, across the North of England.
The Challenge
This not-for-profit social enterprise had been users of a legacy Sage accounts package, that was no longer supporting the needs of a growing organisation.
The incumbent solution did not effectively support the purchasing processes, had no automated import of payroll journal files, lacked budgeting capability and had weak reporting capabilities. A further challenge was one of time to deploy a live solution. Because of the demands from the Government when the organisation transitioned to become a Social Enterprise, the solution had to deployed within a 6-week timeframe.
Selecting Advantage
After making the decision to migrate to a Microsoft Dynamics solution, the organisation adopted a search and selection process with potential partners that were able to meet key criteria:
- A partner with a proven track record in similar organisations.
- A cost-effective licensing model, with provision for discounted Microsoft Dynamics licenses.
- Introduce governance for purchasing processes.
- Provide proactive Account Management to drive the organisation forwards and act as an advocate for Microsoft technologies.
- Provision of a proactive support desk, with inherent accountancy skills as well as deep functional knowledge and experience of Microsoft Dynamics.
Following a review of leading UK Partners, Advantage was selected to transition the Microsoft Dynamics solution. Furthermore, Advantage continues to provide ongoing business continuity support to this day.
The Benefits
The Microsoft Dynamics solution was successfully implemented within the designated timeframe. Some of the benefits realised by the upgrade and move to Advantage were:
- The purchasing processes were now governed.
- Improved reporting and Business Intelligence capability was inherent within the solution.
- Improved the control of expenditure through the solution’s budgeting functionality.
- Implementation of a solution that enabled the organisation to expand without additional demand placed upon the finance team overheads.
The benefits gained above were reflected by the Financial Director at this not-for-profit social enterprise who commented “we were delighted to achieve our overall business goals by making the move to a fully scalable finance system. The expertise and knowledge that the Advantage team had were second to none we had ever experienced previously. Furthermore, the project ran extremely smoothly due to the fantastic and concise communications which were delivered throughout the project.”
Martyn Kemp, New Business Sales & Account Manager was evidently delighted “I enjoyed working on this project and it was pleasing to see how this not-for-profit social enterprise transitioned to Microsoft Dynamics which has clearly helped them to achieve their goals. Moreover, this unique technology is fully supported by our experts here at Advantage to make sure that they stay on track well into the future.”
Conclusion
This not-for-profit social enterprise remains confident in the selection of Microsoft Dynamics for its Finance solution.
Following the implementation of their new Microsoft Dynamics system, they have achieved better control over their budgets as well as improving their overall reporting and day to day efficiency which is something that they will look to improve even further in the long term.
