Business Process Documentation.

Overview

Since 1954, the Catholic Children's Aid Society of Hamilton (CCASH) has protected children from neglect and abuse while providing support to families trying to meet their children's needs. Their staff of 185 supports more than 700 children at any given time throughout Hamilton. 

Key Outcomes

• Implementation of Sage 300 ERP
• Process review conducted
• Streamlined and more efficient business processes
• Fewer data entry errors
• Improved security related to cheques 

Challenge

As a publicly funded agency, CCASH needs to be prudent with their finances; every dollar needs to be spent wisely to ensure the maximum benefit for the children they serve. CCASH relies on its financial software to show where the money is being allocated. However, their mid-market ERP system was not functioning as needed. It was time to move off the system that CCASH had used for the last 5 years. 

"The system was not user friendly. It was difficult to write reports and the general ledger was extremely cluttered. We also did not have good support." - Gail Bury, Director of Finance

Solution

Having been through multiple system transitions, Gail had the vast experience to pull from.  To ensure a successful implementation, there are two critical areas:

• To make sure that users are comfortable with the system; and
• To ensure that the organization's entire set of processes are thoroughly documented

To begin preparing for the transition, CCASH enrolled its users in a Sage 300 ERP overview course at Mohawk College: "We wanted to begin educating our people as early as possible. As a result, they were more involved during the implementation and had a clear sense of the efficiencies they would gain with Sage 300 ERP. They came up with ideas to improve our organization's effectiveness and were excited about it". 

BAASS went in and completely documented CCASH's processes before implementation. With BAASS' deep understanding of Sage 300 ERP and CCASH, BAASS was able to show how they could do things better in Sage 300 and what the transition would look like.  

Outcome

With the detailed preparation complete, CCASH was ready to begin using Sage 300: "We were so prepared that the day we cutover was almost a non-event. Our team was ready and excited for the change". BAASS was responsible for the implementation, training, and overall project management. "We learned during the process review that we were tracking too much detail on some expenses, while other expenses were not being tracked enough. BAASS helped us to reconstruct our chart of accounts, so we have the right level of detail available," Gail said. CCASH now has a streamlined chart of accounts that gives them the information they needed quickly - no more wasting time sorting details line by line and far fewer coding errors.

"The list is endless of the differences between the old system and Sage 300 ERP. Every bit of cost saving, whether on paper or people, allows us to use more funds to help the children we serve." - Gail Bury, Director of Finance

CCASH now has easy access to data and has made running reports a whole lot smoother: "The difference between running a trial balance is night and day in terms of time, effort, and clarity of information. We also can more easily identify cost drivers with some customizations that BAASS did for us". Also, their Bank Reconciliation used to be a manual process that took half a day to complete. In comparison, it now takes them less than an hour a month to reconcile. 

"Our team is so much more productive. We are able to maintain increasing demands with the same number of staff. BAASS has been a big part of this success. Their knowledge and level of support is impressive." - Gail Bury, Director of Finance

Furthermore, CCASH processes 500-750 cheques monthly. Their Board of Directors is pleased with the improved security features related to cheque printing. "We have three bank accounts and had to maintain the associated cheque stock. BAASS recommended a product, PrintBoss, which allows us to print the appropriate routing information on blank stock and only when needed. This is far more secure and cost-effective," Gail mentioned. CCASH also reduced its vendor list by 75%, as there was no automated way to purge vendors in their old system. Additionally, they have reduced the number of forms they use. 

Looking forward, CCASH has plans to implement the Sage 300 Payroll module, which would give them more insight into payroll details since the data will be managed internally instead of with an external service.