Who are CVD Mali?
CVD-Mali was formed in 2001, from an agreement between the Government of Mali through the Ministry of Health and the University of Maryland in the United States of America through its Center for Vaccine Development.
Through cutting-edge health research and interventions, the Centre for Vaccine Development (CVD) based in Mali, strives to help people to lead healthier, longer and more fulfilling lives.
The Challenge
As the organisation has expanded, the need to manage financial transactions for purchases, inventory and general accounting has equally grown, placing increased demand on manual processes, Excel & much more.
The need to deploy an ‘out of the box’, best global practice finance/ERP solution, was therefore recognised as being essential.
The Solution
Having made the decision to replace their finance solution, CVD Mali adopted the standard approach to the search and selection of a new solution by outlining their key business requirements.
The new solution had to meet the following criteria:
- Provide better financial visibility and control – it is imperative that the organisation has complete visibility of financial data to enable strategic decisions to be made effectively & accurately;
- Provide a scalable and flexible solution – it is important that the solution had scalability to develop and grow as the organisation evolves;
- Provide organisational efficiency – it is critical that time delays for the day to day running of the business were minimised to focus on business-critical tasks;
- Provide a cost-effective solution to streamline costs - as a Charitable organisation, it was critical that the back office solution is cost-effective and reduces overhead costs dramatically
- Flexible reporting - to enable the organisation to quickly export and analyse data at a glance;
- Better Business Insight - so that the organisation can understand how to improve business performance to reinvest in frontline services.
Following a review of leading Finance software providers, CVD Mali selected a Microsoft Dynamics implementation due to its proven functionality and capabilities to meet their key objectives & goals.
Why did the company choose Advantage as their ERP partner?
Via a Global Public Health Consultancy, Tro Da Ltd, Advantage was chosen to implement Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. Crucial to the selection of Advantage was the ability to deploy the solution, based upon standard functionality, at a market leading fixed price via their QuickStart Business Central implementation.
Collins Okello, Head of Finance, also cited that as a determinant in the ERP selection process, the fact that “Microsoft Dynamics is a user-friendly solution which works the same way as other Microsoft products”. This means that the solution is quickly adopted by staff members which means we can export our data to familiar Microsoft Office 365 tools such as Excel to analyse the performance of the organisation”
When asked about the organisation’s relationship with Advantage today, Collins commented: “Following a demonstration of the solution by Advantage, I was impressed with the functionality available and how cost-effective Microsoft Dynamics is. The Microsoft Dynamics solution has the flexibility, scalability and cost-effectiveness to help us drive operational efficiency within the organisation.”
The Benefits
The core finance solution was successfully implemented within 4 weeks with inventory being deployed shortly afterwards. A key benefit of the implementation was that all activities could be carried out remotely, as the solution is hosted by Microsoft on their Azure Cloud environment.
Conclusion
CVD Mali remains confident in the selection of Microsoft Dynamics for its Finance solution.
Since the implementation of Microsoft Dynamics and the system going live, CVD Mali has achieved significant time savings in the day-to-day running of the organisation, whilst now gaining better business insight into how to effectively remain efficient for the future.
