BDNH – Ballarat District Nursing & HealthcareHow EXO helped this NFP relieve stress and save time
BDNH Group is a community service organisation operating in the Ballarat region and on a not-for-profit basis. The organisation is “not-for-profit” but nevertheless it is vital that finances are managed efficiently. As a not-for-profit entity the group is subject to audit and must therefore ensure data integrity, internal controls, efficient audit trails and at the same time achieve high levels of efficiency.
For more than 100 years BDNH has been the leading provider of district nursing in the Ballarat regional community. As the organisation grew and expanded to provide new services it became vital to track the performance of individual business units and services.
As our business expanded, we found that reporting was taking up all of the Finance Managers time. The workload meant that there was too much time pressure on the Finance Management and not enough time to analyse the data and advise the Board.
Challenge
As our organisation grew we were finding it harder to meet our deadlines. We had relied on MYOB Premier for more than a decade and it was great while our business was smaller. As we grew and added new services it became necessary to develop workarounds and manual reporting processes.
We also operated multiple systems which did not talk to each other, requiring us to re-key data into different systems and therefore increasing our workload.
Solution
While MYOB EXO ticked all the boxes in terms of the functionality that was required, there was one final hurdle. Initially BDNH contacted an MYOB EXO software provider and had an unsatisfactory experience. This undermined BDNH’s confidence in MYOB EXO and the project was put on hold until the new financial year.
Once the new financial year started BDNH contacted Communicat. Not only were Communicat highly knowledgeable about the capabilities of the system, they took the time to listen and learn about the functions that BDNH needed and designed a custom solution based on MYOB EXO. Communicat were accommodating, friendly, enthusiastic and meticulous with how they analysed the required functions, scoped out the project and provided a quotation for the complete system.
“From the first time Communicat travelled to Ballarat to meet us, they really listened to us and that created great rapport” said Debra Parsons, CFO, BDNH Group.
“After a while, I felt like the Communicat EXO consultant was another part-time staff member”
The implementation process took around three months from start to finish, so the system was customised and delivered on time and on budget. The system is now fully up and running. We are in regular contact with Communicat to obtain system updates, ongoing improvements, support and tips.
Benefits
“We love the improvements that we have seen with our MYOB EXO system. It has reduced our stress and frustrations and provided us with more time to perform financial management and analysis”
- Monthly reporting is automated. There are no Excel spreadsheets or formulas to worry about. This is saving us time every month and this has greatly improved our ability to achieve our reporting deadlines.
- Budgeting is improved. Once the budget is finalised in Excel we can then import it directly into EXO and automatically produce our reports.
- We can produce multiple forecasts and management reports based on different forecast scenarios.
- End of month journals can be calculated in Excel and imported directly into EXO.
- Automated recurring invoices are produced by the system, saving us hours of work.
- Invoices are automatically emailed to our customers with the press of a button.
Before
- Systems were slow, tedious, cumbersome and this caused a lot of stress in trying to meet deadlines.
- We had different systems that were not connected and therefore we had to waste time keying data between multiple systems.
- Extracting data about different services and divisions was carried out manually causing a lot of extra work. The system was not coping with our divisionalised structure.
- Outdated and clunky chart of accounts
After
- Able to import and export budget data with ease.
- Able to link in data from external systems.
- We can email invoices and statements to our customers at the touch of a button.
- Management reports are customised exactly as we need them, and produced automatically.
- Our business has grown and we are coping with the extra work due to the efficiency of our system.
- Automated reporting saves us many days of work, so we have more time available to analyse information and advise the board.
- Automated processes such as automated periodic invoicing and emailing to customers.
- We can call Communicat for support as often as we wish and there is no extra cost, thanks to our fixed price support agreement.