Devon Wildlife Trust
Established as a registered charity in 1962, Devon
Wildlife Trust is the only organisation concerned with all aspects
of wildlife conservation in Devon. It is also a member of The
Wildlife Trusts partnership, an influential national network
dedicated to the achievement of a UK richer in
wildlife.
The challenge
Devon Wildlife Trust had been using a TAS Books system running a
Btrieve database for 9 years and it was obvious that the company
had outgrown its existing system. Its limited capacity led to data
overload and subsequently proved unreliable - for example, crashing
each time another user was added to the network. It was time to
change the system!
Devon Wildlife Trust was realistic about timescale, as with a
number of charity and NFP organisations, this wasn't going to
happen overnight! This was a large investment, probably one of the
biggest the organisation will make, so the Trust needed to be
confident in their decision that the chosen software would meet the
needs of the organisation and enhance business processes today, and
in the future.
An implementation team was appointed, consisting of: Christine
Hawkins, Finance Manager, Kate Pitts, Finance Officer and Simon
Rutley- Frayne, IT Manager. The team reviewed the present system
and embarked on 6 months of information-gathering before they were
happy that they had done enough research to make an informed
decision. The team then made a presentation to the Honorary
Treasurer, Anthony Jackson, who agreed with the proposal to change
the system and gave the team the green light.
The selection process
"We can now implement changes to the budgets every
single month - previously this would take over a week to process,
but Dimensions takes about half an hour!" Christine Hawkins
Finance Manager
Devon Wildlife Trust considered a number of solutions and
compiled a shortlist. Hansa and Sun were immediately removed
because they proved too expensive. Sage MMS and Exchequer, were
then ruled out as neither provided the level of functionality
required by the Trust.
Two remained on the shortlist; Access Dimensions and
Kypera. After a demonstration of both solutions, the Team decided
that Kypera was visually unappealing and much preferred Access
Dimensions' 'look and feel'. The Team was also very impressed by
the solution, demonstrated by the Access consultants.
Experts in the sector
Access has a proven track record of implementations in charity
and not-for-profit organisations. This heavily influenced the
Trust's decision as it gave them the confidence that they were
dealing with a provider that understands the demands and challenges
of the sector. The consultants were also able to provide a highly
relevant reference site in the form of Sussex Wildlife Trust. In
fact, their 'glowing report' provided the deal-clincher for Finance
Manager Christine Hawkins. "Hearing the business benefits
first-hand from an organisation so similar to ours was all we
needed to reconfirm Access's expertise in the NFP sector" she
says.
The implementation
To gain maximum benefit from the investment, the software needed
to be configured to Devon Wildlife Trust's own business environment
and unique ways of working. As part of the consultancy
service, the Access consultants carefully analysed Devon Wildlife
Trust's existing business activities, using this information to
shape the new solution until it provided the best
fit possible.
Devon Wildlife Trust and the dedicated Access consultant worked
together to form an implementation plan to ensure that the
functionality required was delivered on-time and to budget. Simon
Rutley-Frayne, IT Manager, had already made the decision to change
the Trust's IT infrastructure to SQL, as he wanted a more robust
system with more processing server-side which would in turn
massively increase data speed. So the Access Dimensions solution,
which is based on Microsoft's industry-standard SQL Server 2005
database, fitted the Trust's new structure perfectly.
A go-live date was set of 30th April to coincide with the new
financial year. The implementation took 6 months, from
demonstration to go-live date, and the Specialist Centre
implemented the system on-time and within budget.
The solution
Devon Wildlife Trust had a number of business issues that they
wanted the new solution to address and Christine and her finance
team began to feel the benefit of the solution almost immediately
after implementation.
Keeping track of a huge number of different projects was a major
issue, and ensuring that each had cost centres for funds, income
and expenditure, was essential to see exactly what each project had
generated for the Trust. Christine Hawkins commented, "There is
absolutely no limit to the number of projects that can be set up
and Access Dimensions gives us
the ability to fully analyse each individual project in such
detail. Now we can see actual costs and income for each project.
This accurate information was not available to us before".
The Trust needed a flexible nominal structure, so they could
report income as New, Secure and Predictable, to enable the
Trustees to change the way they require reports to be produced.
This could not be achieved with TAS Books, however, Access
Dimensions easily achieved this by using a category to flag an
Account. This dictates how the Account is reported to the Trustees
and can be easily changed without affecting management
information.
The benefits
The Access consultants wrote six new reports in Crystal Reports
specifically for the Trust so they could arrange the data in the
format needed to ensure and present the information exactly as
required. "The quality of report-writing provided was phenomenal
and all of the reports that were written specifically for us were
absolutely first class", commented Christine.
Christine also attended a two-day Crystal Reports training
course so she could amend existing reports, if requirements
changed. Christine added "Being able to 'tweak' reports in-house
has been of major benefit."
Access Dimensions' powerful reporting provides full
transparency across the entire organisation, and Trust employees
can now run any report they may need. This takes the pressure off
the finance department, who were previously responsible for running
all the reports required by employees of the Trust.
The Trust needed to implement Excel spreadsheets
containing information, such as budget and timesheets, into the
finance system, so they didn't have to re-key the information
twice. The re-keying of information from the TAS Books system into
Excel, and vice versa, was a major issue, it was time-consuming and
the data was prone to errors. Access Dimensions eliminated the need
for re-keying and data can now be imported or exported quickly and
efficiently.
As a charity, funding is prone to change throughout the year.
Devon Wildlife Trust needed the ability to revise budgets; the TAS
Books system could achieve this but it was very time-consuming.
Access Dimensions supports flexible budgeting quickly and
accurately. Christine commented, "We can now implement changes to
the budgets every single month. Previously this would take over a
week to process, but Dimensions takes about half an hour!"
Exploring the possibilities
Christine commented "When we chose Access Dimensions we knew
that we were implementing a solution that would grow with us. I am
fully aware that we are presently only using a fraction of the
functionality that is available. Over time, we intend to fully
embrace all the features that the solution can offer and add
modules as our organisation grows and additional functionality is
required".
When the time comes, most IT and Finance Managers know their software systems need to change but have a mountain to climb in persuading senior management to make the necessary investment.
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