“Unlike other ERP systems, Sage Intacct is user-friendly and gives us the ability to easily grow without major headaches when it comes time to add new clinics or adapt to evolving reporting requirements. It also saves us the cost of on–premises hardware, training, annual upgrades, and maintenance renewals.”
– Remote Area Medical –
Making the Switch from Microsoft Dynamics to Sage Intacct
Remote Area Medical (RAM®) is a nonprofit organization that manages mobile medical clinics, which deliver no-cost health care to thousands of patients around the world. RAM has steadily increased the number of clinics and patients it serves, establishing local teams that find space, donations, and volunteers for new clinics in areas where there is a great need. As its reach grew, the organization needed to scale its financial processes and was looking for better visibility into location-specific spending.
RAM previously used Microsoft Dynamics GP for four years, but eventually found the on-premises system to be cumbersome and opaque. As a result, its finance team created a complex conglomeration of Excel spreadsheets that they tediously manipulated in order to report to the executive committee and board of directors. It was very difficult to produce timely reports, resulting in a multi-month lag on the financials.
“We wanted a cloud–based solution with flexible, real-time reporting across multiple entities or locations–and Sage Intacct fit the bill perfectly,” said Don Mackay, CFO at RAM. “Unlike other ERP systems, Sage Intacct is user-friendly and gives us the ability to easily grow without major headaches when it comes time to add new clinics or adapt to evolving reporting requirements. It also saves us the cost of on–premises hardware, training, annual upgrades, and maintenance renewals.”
Streamlined Processes Speed Monthly Close
RAM partnered with a Sage Intacct partner to assist with the transition from Microsoft Dynamics GP to Sage Intacct, and was up and running in three months. RAM credits the fast implementation to Sage Intacct’s user-friendly interface and to the partner’s proper planning and preparation. With Sage Intacct, the organization has automated its accounts payable and accounts receivable processes, and now keeps track of this data in real-time. RAM is also able to easily apply transactions to its different philanthropic programs and clinics to enable less time consuming and more accurate project accounting.
The finance team has reduced manual data entry by preparing simple uploads into Sage Intacct from its donor database and payroll system. As a result, they spend much less time closing the books each month, and can now run the financials in just a day or so as opposed to the 15 days the process took before. “Even as our transaction volumes increased by 30 percent, Sage Intacct allowed us to keep our finance team lean and avoid adding staff at the same pace as the rest of the organization. As a result, we’re able to reallocate that headcount budget to programs that directly further our mission,” noted Mackay.
Dimensional Visibility Drives Operational Decisions
Sage Intacct’s flexible reporting capabilities allow RAM to tag individual transactions with key dimensions, such as vendor, employee, department, project, vehicle ID, etc. This gives the organization much more granular insight into things like actual spending on each plane or truck, including fuel and maintenance costs. In addition, the finance team now tracks functional expenses for each clinic in Sage Intacct, so they can create and monitor budgets by program and produce location– specific financial reports. This also helps RAM with project forecasting when determining where to put new clinics, and how much the development team will need to raise in order to cover equipment costs.
RAM’s streamlined reporting process gives its executives access to timely financial data at both the consolidated or individual entity level in Sage Intacct. The organization’s leadership can now easily monitor revenue–from both restricted and unrestricted donations–as well as cash flow. And board meetings are more productive now that Mackay can simply pull up financial reports right from Sage Intacct on the spot. If a board member has a question about a line item, he can easily drill down to instantly show where specific expenses came from.
In addition, executives can closely monitor financials at any time using their own Sage Intacct dashboards, which feature Performance Cards that show a snapshot of key metrics like revenue compared to budget, alongside cash and short–term investment reports by month, as well as RAM’s sustainability index. Next up, the organization plans to capture more statistical data within Sage Intacct, such as its number of volunteers and donors, the value of the care it provides, and the average size of donations.
About Remote Area Medical
RAM provides free, quality dental, vision and medical care to those who cannot afford it. The non-profit organization sets up mobile medical centers that deliver competent and compassionate health care to those who are impoverished, isolated, and underserved around the world.
