Community Living Thunder Bay "We wanted to align ourselves with a true partner and a company that clearly understood and could address our requirements. Altus’s focus and commitment to the supported living and nonprofit market was evident in our discussions with them, and the satisfaction levels of organizations similar to ours highly impressed us." Sandra Buosi, Director of Finance,
Community Living Thunder Bay At a Glance
Location: Thunder Bay, ON
Industry: Not-for-Profit Supported Living Client Profile Community Living Thunder Bay (CLTB) provides support for intellectually disabled individuals to reach full participation in community life in the Thunder Bay city area. Now in 74 locations throughout the city, CLTB offers services ranging from supported community living, child care centre, day service and social opportunity programs. These programs and services are tailored specifically to the individuals being served and focus on the consumers’ strengths, needs and choices. Challenge Community Living Thunder Bay was using several different systems to handle finances, human resources and payroll and was seeking a scalable, secure and flexible fully integrated solution. Results With Altus Dynamics Community Living Thunder Bay deployed Altus Dynamics – Supported Living powered by Microsoft Dynamics® NAV because it offered the flexibility, integration and stability the organization was looking for, achieving significant operational benefits as a result: The Result
Since completing the implementation of the Altus Dynamics Supported Living financial solution powered by Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Community Living Thunder Bay (CLTB) has gained significant tangible benefits for all their key business areas: Financial Management, Procurement, Payroll, Human Resources, Scheduling and Reporting. Real Time, on Demand Data Analysis and Reporting
Their new end-user reporting tools enable finance staff to easily build their own reports without any reliance on IT. As reporting requirements change from the Ministry, staff can easily modify existing reports or build new ones quickly. Dynamic NAV’s logical chart of accounts enabled more dynamic financial reporting, intersecting data in any way CLTB needed. Staff can easily view real time budget availability directly in the Chart of Accounts. Furthermore, the reporting tools offered by the Altus solution are highly flexible and can accommodate all formatting requirements for internal or external reporting. Budget Management Controls
An integrated business application creates an efficient working environment that reduced manual data entry between the replaced disparate applications. Approval processes have been implemented to reduce manual paper trails on procurement. Simplified Billing
"One specific benefit we have already realized is a simplified process for invoicing clients from our daycare facilities," advises Buosi. "Whereas previously the attendance information tracked by spreadsheet at the centre had to be manually re-typed into our financial system, now that we have Dynamics NAV those spreadsheets are directly integrated with accounts receivables, allowing billing to proceed automatically." Rapid User Adoption
Community Living Thunder Bay staff have found that the user interface with its typical MS Office menu bar and tool bar and navigation pane, editable help feature and standard keyboard shortcuts have helped reduce the learning curve inherent in the switch to a new system. Data management tools allow CLTB to search, filter, navigate and drill down on calculated values resulting in increased more rapid access to information. In addition to these benefits it is expected that once further phases are implemented, CLTB will experience improved transparency with regards to their employees. With the employee portals, workers find it possible to independently review their personal information, attendance balances or qualifications and expiry dates online. They will also be able to request changes to their information. Once web portals are implemented greater access to training information and opportunities will enable employees to review course offerings and register in upcoming training sessions. Once registered, their schedules can be updated to reflect their availability for regular shifts, and once completed, their employee data will be updated with their new qualifications. The Challenge
With nearly 500 employees providing support and services for hundreds of clients, CLTB, like many Community Living organizations across Canada, was finding that demand for their services was increasing while budgets and resources seemed to remain static. Increased governmental emphasis on accountability meant that their financial system was struggling to handle an ever growing volume of information and statistics. The existing structure of applications used to run the operations of the organization simply could not provide the improvements in efficiencies required. Data duplication, manual processes, restricted reporting options, a sunset date and an imminent withdrawal of support for their financial system prompted their search for a new financial management, human resources and payroll solution. Their legacy financial solution, ACCPAC, did not provide the flexibility required and users found it difficult to get any level of integration with other mission-critical applications. The technology and DOS-based interface proved difficult to new users to understand and use. In addition, limited and cumbersome formatting in ACCPAC meant that many essential reports were created by re-keying already existing information from into spreadsheets in order to achieve the required formatting and layout. Human Resources and Payroll functions were handled by two different applications. ABRA was a stand-alone Human Resources application that had some limitations in tracking staff training and accreditation. Their outsourced ADP payroll model required staff to spend a great deal of time re-keying data; they calculated that their payroll staff was doing 90% of the work already and yet they were paying for an outsourced service. Many key users found themselves using Excel spreadsheets for budgeting, reporting, forecasting, and staff scheduling. "We considered upgrading our existing applications but we quickly came to the conclusion that what we really needed was a single fully integrated application to help us run our operations seamlessly from end to end," explains Buosi. When CLTB made the decision to look at new enterprise solutions they took advantage of the opportunity to audit their entire system and business processes. The group soon produced a detailed requirements list, and then began contacting vendors and requesting demonstrations based on their supplied list of needs. In addition to the Altus Dynamics – Supported Living solution, CLTB evaluated a number of financial applications on the market. But what they found with Altus Supported Living provided unmatched flexibility, and complete and integrated functionality. Altus offered a complete solution from GL through to Payroll/HR and scheduling.
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