CASE STUDY | GenWest
Sage Intacct opens up new opportunities for GenWest (formerly known as Women's Health West).
Non-profit organisation invests in new software to help deliver crucial service to women in need.
GenWest was in need of a system that helped them compile reports for other teams.
“Their existing accounting systems were no longer adequate to meet the growth of the organisation. It was then that we recommended using Sage Intacct to help meet their current business requirements.”
- Nunzio Giunta, Managing Partner, Giuntabell
GenWest is a non-profit organisation, dedicated to supporting women in the Western Region of Melbourne affected by gender inequality or domestic abuse.
Key outcomes:
• 70 hours saved every month by switching from manual to automated reporting system.
• Finance team feels more integrated with rest of organisation.
• Time freed up allow team to support income diversification strategy and attract new donors.
• Non-finance staff are able to access key information quickly and easily.
The organisation's vision is to achieve gender equality for women and enable them to lead healthy and safe lives, free from abuse and opression. Their services focus on prevention, intervention and response.
GenWest was founded more than 30 years ago in 1988 by 11 women and has since grown to employ around 150 people.
Time intensive reporting
Meriem Idris, Finance Manager at GenWest, was facing a number of challenges with
their previous system. One major issue was the process for compiling reports for other teams and the time that it took to do so.
“If you wanted to do a report you had to upload information from the finance system to the
reporting system, and then export that to a spreadsheet,” says Meriem.
GenWest received a recommendation to use Sage Intacct after a meeting with
Giuntabell, a consultancy which specialises in helping charities and not-for-profits to enhance their financial performance.
Nunzio Giunta, Managing Partner of Giuntabell, says: “We were initially contacted by GenWest to support them with their general purpose financial reports.
“It soon became clear that their existing accounting systems were no longer adequate to meet the growth of the organisation. It was then that we recommended using Sage Intacct to help meet their current business requirements,” he adds.
After introducing Sage Intacct, GenWest are now able to track and approve vouchers so women can escape domestic abuse safely.
"Having Sage Intacct has saved us around 70 hours per month, which can now be used to add valoue to Women's Health West in other areas - such as supporting the organisation to attract more donors."
- Meriem Idris, Finance Manager, GenWest
Providing a crucial service to those in need
A key challenge facing the organisation was being able to effectively track its vouchers, an absolutely crucial service it offers to women experiencing domestic violence and who need to leave home immediately
“Imagine you had 200,000 vouchers and you wanted to know what came in and what came out,” says Meriem.
Using Sage Intacct enabled Meriem and the team to be able to track the vouchers from
purchasing, approval, all the way through to distribution to the women using their service.
“The vouchers that GenWest provide enable women and their children to purchase essential items at a time of crisis,” adds Nunzio.
Time savings free up time to add value to organisation and support colleagues
Meriem has calculated the impact of the software on the organisation. “Having Sage Intacct has saved us around 70 hours per month, which can now be used to add value to GenWest in other areas — such as supporting the organisation to attract more donors,” she says.
Around 30 staff are also able to access the dashboard which means they no longer have to wait for the finance team to provide them with important information, such as how their project and funding is doing.
Sage Intacct has helped to unify departments within GenWest.
"Prior to having Sage Intacct, we were only focused on numbers. The time we are saving is now being used to add value and we now have the opportunity to be part of the whole organisation."
- Meriem Idris, Finance Manager, GenWest
The future is bright for financial teams
Nunzio is very excited about what the future holds for finance teams from using programmes like Sage Intacct, moving away from the stereotypical ‘number cruncher’ to being ‘trusted advisors’ within an organisation, and ‘adding more value to help them make well-informed decisions’.
Meriem agrees, saying that it has made the financial team feel more connected to the rest of GenWest.
“Prior to having Sage Intacct, we were only focused on numbers. The time we are saving is now being used to add value and we now have the opportunity to be part of the whole organisation,” says Meriem.
She believes that the benefits of Sage Intacct have only just begun and is looking forward to exploring how else the software can support the crucial mission of GenWest.
About Sage Intacct
Sage Intacct is the innovation and customer satisfaction leader in cloud financial management. Bringing cloud computing to finance and accounting Sage Intacct’s innovative and award- winning applications are the preferred financial applications and rated the number one accounting software solution in customer satisfaction by G2.