Out-of-the-box fit for healthcare provider
When Spectrum Care needed a unified view of its finances, 700 FTE staff and assets distributed all over the North Island, it’s accountant’s recommendation was tough to ignore…
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For people like Chuong, Spectrum Care provides a lifeline. Formerly homeless, Chuong is one of many who benefit from the communal homes and community care Spectrum provides. The non-profit organisation helps more than 400 people with disabilities to live a normal life within the community, by providing residential homes throughout the Auckland and Waikato regions. When Spectrum Care restructured its management team in 2003, a key focus was increasing accountability for performance on specific contracts. The team needed a unified view of its finances – no mean feat for an organisation with 700 full time equivalent workers, and assets including houses and vehicles throughout the North Island. Not only were resources spread widely, they were spread thinly, as anyone who has worked in a non-profit organisation can attest. As part of the restructure, Spectrum’s general manager of business services Kim Casey saw that it was time to upgrade the accounting package they were using. “We were swayed towards [Microsoft] Navision,” says Casey. “We were influenced by the integrity of Navision because it was recommended by our accountants themselves, so we naturally have a high regard for their recommendation.” Spectrum used implementation partner Intergen, which specialises in medium-sized businesses. This focus aided the consultation process with Spectrum, a large-scale organisation with a small budget. “It is an accounting package with multi-level reporting, and it’s also able to give us life-to-date operating information on certain fixed assets,” says Casey. Piddington says the lack of customisation needed meant installation could be done rapidly and inexpensively. “It was done as a combination of speed and cost and the fact that their business maps quite nicely to the way the system works, or the system maps quite nicely to the way their system works ... a bit of both, really.” Now in the third year of using Dynamics NAV, Spectrum is working with Intergen to open up more of the potential of the software. “We’re working towards a cleaner, clearer picture of the whole financial situation,” says Piddington. Currently Spectrum Care is using Dynamics NAV to track financial data on fixed assets such as vehicles and property. Future iterations will enable Spectrum to introduce non-financial information into the picture. Piddington explains the organisation has two Access databases outside Navision, a vehicle management database and a property management database. While much of the information is duplicated in Navision, some vital operating information is not. “They keep track of how many kilometres the vehicle has done each time it's refuelled, when it's warrant of fitness is due, that sort of thing,” he says “Our next phase of work is to take those databases and get that set up in Navision. So it's more about getting non-financial data around the vehicles so they can get a better view of what's going on.” A reason behind the popularity of Dynamics NAV is the way it is developed in consultation with users. A recent report on internetnews.com quotes Mogens Elsberg, gm of Microsoft’s Dynamic NAV division, as saying the software is developed to give a user experience specific to each role within the organisation. The report says Microsoft studied the environments of 3,000 of its closest customers’ environments, “studying in almost anthropological detail how various employees did their work.” The result is an out-of-the-box piece of ERP software that users can approach in the way they feel most comfortable. For more information contact Business Solutions Enquiries: |
November 2006
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