Microsoft Dynamics NAV lifts efficiency by 20-30 per cent
Jennifer Foreshew May 08, 2012
CONTRACTOR management business Entity Solutions had outgrown its five-year-old accounting software, experiencing turnover growth of almost 50 per cent in 2010-11.
Its existing software had limitations in its reporting and analytical capabilities by being a period-driven system that required third-party software to generate reports.
“It wasn’t a date-driven system, so it made it very difficult to wind back dates,” Entity Solutions chief executive Matthew Franceschini says. “We have about 2500 contractors, so we are running about 5000 payrolls every month and 2500 invoices.”
The software sometimes crashed and resulted in a half-day of disruption to staff every month.
“Ultimately, you need a system to enable you to make timely decisions and it just wasn’t able to provide the level of reporting that we needed, and it also had some functional limitations around our invoicing structures and things like that,” Franceschini says.
Entity Solutions spent three or four months looking at offerings in the market. These included Tencia, Oracle, SAP Business One, ACCPAC and MYOB Exonet.
The company opted for the Microsoft Dynamics NAV enterprise resource planning system, which was implemented last year across three to four months by Melbourne-based Evolution Business Systems.
EBS previously supported Entity Solutions with its former accounting system.
Franceschini says the system was chosen because it was “date driven”, not “period driven”, which was important to obtain on-the-spot data about accounts and customers, rather than waiting until the end of the month.
Its live general ledger, expandability and the ability to customise to suit the unique needs of Entity Solutions’ business were also a priority.
In the past 12 months, Entity Solutions supported more than 4300 independent professionals, invoiced more than 620 contracting organisations for their services and provided them with payment as well as a range of accounting and taxation compliance services.
Founded in 1999, the company has about 80 staff, with most based in Melbourne. It also has offices in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide.
The contractor management company provides holistic engagement, management and value-add services for white-collar contractors, referred to as independent professionals or IPros, and the organisations hiring them.
Entity Solutions also offers migration, back office, business establishment and management services.
The deployment of Microsoft NAV Dynamics came in on time and within budget. Its proposed budget was $100,000.
Microsoft Dynamics NAV assists the company in other areas of the business such as migration and back office business.
“You can create a dashboard view so the executive can look at one level of reporting, whereas finance then can look at another,” Franceschini says. “We do have a separate payroll system and we do link our data feeds to our clients, so the other thing needed was a common format that makes it easy to talk to other systems and it does all of that.”
Microsoft Dynamics NAV has boosted the efficiency of the company by at least 20 per cent to 30 per cent.
“I think that we have grown during that period quite significantly, yet we haven’t had to put on any finance staff,” Franceschini says. “I’d suggest we have probably saved at least one wage.”
As Microsoft Dynamics NAV is date driven, Entity Solutions can get a snapshot at any time, which allows it to convert its accounts receivable to payroll. It has a live GL and its balance sheet and income statement are live.
Entity Solutions has also seen improved productivity, staff morale and performance since the project. It has saved almost 60 hours a month by eliminating disruption and manual processes.
“I can check our monthly figures, check reports of all different types, and if there is a new report that I need the guys build it in a couple of days,” Franceschini says. Entity Solutions expects to implement other modules as required. “There is some functionality that we think we are going to need as we grow. Some of that is to do with reporting, but some is other functionality around the way we can restructure some of our consolidated invoicing.
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