Community Living South Muskoka (CLSM) provides lifetime support to all those impacted by a developmental disability, utilizing skilled staff and effective partnerships involving the individual, the family, and the community with the result that the individual is accepted as a valued community member.
CLSM was having a tough time supporting multiple systems, which was taking a toll on their internal staff. Managing employees was difficult since vacation requests and personal information were tracked manually. At the same time, reporting was very cumbersome and would take a long time to retrieve information from the previous system.
It was clear that CLSM could benefit from an integrated system with flexible reporting and scheduling tools and comprehensive employee self-serve options.
“We desperately needed an integrated system to pull information quickly and easily. Also, scheduling conflicts and vacation requests created many difficulties and communication challenges for the staff.”
- Rick Van Der Ley
Director of Administration for CLSM
The implementation of the General Ledger took less than two months. Their project manager Victor designed a template that simplified the importing of data from the previous system to the new one.
"Working with him has been a great experience, making us feel that Sparkrock has our best interest at heart. Overall, we’re thrilled to get information out of our system so easily! Sparkrock’s solution was an obvious choice when we learned that it encompassed scheduling, finance, and reporting modules in one integrated system. It’s great that we don’t need to support 3 or 4 different systems and struggle to make them work together anymore."
- Rick Van Der Ley
Director of Administration for CLSM
After replacing their previous 10 year old system with Finance & Accounting, and Workforce Management solutions, CLSM was extremely satisfied. It is easy to get information from the reporting modules in one integrated system.
With their new system, CLSM now has real-time, on-demand data analysis and reporting. They can manage and track their budgets and allocate funds to different community programs. They are also now able to export and refresh data directly in Excel, which allows users to set up detailed reports and update them with the click of a button.
From a user standpoint, their new accounting system provides the better navigation they were looking for. With a more user-friendly environment, employees can navigate from one table to another with minimal clicks, or through the solution-wide search functionality. Also, employees now have the ability to access the information they are looking for without having to ask the Finance department. This will also ensure end-users are seeing the most up-to-date, real-time information with refresh capabilities.
Their new scheduling tool makes it easy for their HR department to make informed scheduling decisions for any location, eliminate shift conflicts, notify employees of work shifts automatically, avoid human error, and produce perfect timesheets every month.
All of this adds up to providing easier, more-streamlined administrative processes, which allows more time and money to be funnelled into the valuable services they provide for their community.
The District of Nipissing Social Services Administration Board (DNSSAB) is committed to promoting and enhancing healthy communities, and strengthening and empowering their citizens. With a wealth of in-house experience, they carry out their mission in a citizen-focused manner, and by offering the best quality of services possible.
DNSSAB was using an outdated and costly system that made them rely on Excel spreadsheets to complete most tasks. Reporting was a hassle since the legacy software did not easily support basic accounting transactions and reporting, like providing aged Accounts Receivable listings.
“Everything took a long time. It took two Finance Officers to handle the many workarounds we developed. On top of that, the system was not user friendly and delayed the simple process of retrieving financial information.”
- Sara Tonks
Director of Finance and Administration
With more than 75 funds to manage, the organization was searching for a solution that catered to their specific needs and could handle complex reporting to 4 different government funders. The top 3 goals set out by Tonks were flexibility to use dimensions, user-friendliness, and flexibility in reporting and accessing of information.
Sparkrock’s Finance and Accounting solution that was implemented solved all of the problems that DNSSAB was facing when it came to reporting. They can now add many different dimensions to their data, allowing them to slice and dice information and arrange it exactly the way their funders want it.
Furthermore, their new system can integrate with other systems to make importing and exporting data simple and fast, while providing real-time numbers. Workflows also streamline processes to ensure that funds and grants go through the proper approval process before being allocated to one of DNSSAB’s programs.
After implementing their new solution, DNSSAB reduced the immediate accounting costs by $20,000 and realized significant improvements in efficiency. They virtually eliminated human errors of keying in information, and their reporting became a breeze!
What’s more, their month-end reports used to not be ready until the 3rd week the following month; now they are able to run reports any time, in real-time. They’ve reduced the reporting time from a month to usually less than 2 days.
Overall, because of these new-found efficiencies, DNSSAB estimates saving about $50,000 per year, which can be reallocated back into their services.
To provide responsive and individualized services that foster the hopes and dreams of people and their communities.
They were ready for a digital transformation because of the time- consuming inefficiencies they had from disparate systems in their operations. The staff’s challenges stemmed from administrative processes that were done manually which took a lot of time – especially the payment of their 200 foster parents, which happens twice a month – they had to manually enter every dollar amount for every parent.
New Directions has scaled from a $21 million organization into a $51 million organization because of the switch from a disparate system to a single ERP platform. Instead of manually keying in every amount, they’re able to import a list of contacts with all of the amounts to pay directly into the General Ledger – something that took hours now takes seconds.
New Directions has been able to grow tremendously by increasing their efficiencies and reducing the time it takes to complete administrative processes.
The biggest time saver for the organization has been how they’re now able to pay their foster parents. Instead of manually keying in every amount, they’re able to import a list of contacts with all of the amounts to pay directly into the General Ledger – what used to take an hour now takes seconds.
One of the most complicated areas of scheduling for New Directions is that 32 of their homes are scheduled 24/7, but this is all managed manually. Overtime costs become a problem because finding available staff with the right qualifications must be done over the phone.
With the new HRP solution and Scheduling functionality, all of these processes will become automated, allowing staff to go online to see what shifts are available, while built-in alerts will notify managers when certain staff are approaching overtime hours.
Kenora District Services Board delivers needed social services to all citizens in the District of Kenora, Ontario. They provide assistance to Ontario Works, Social Housing, Emergency Medical Services and Early Learning and Child Care Services under the vision that with forward thinking and engaged employees they can achieve consistent service and better outcomes.
As Kenora District Services Board expanded they needed a more advanced financial management solution and several other product enhancing features to support their operations. They had three main pain points.
The first was reporting; with their existing financial software, reports were time consuming to create and the capability to easily update reports was not there.
The second was navigation; within their system it was hard to find what they were looking for. It often took several clicks or drill downs to find relevant information and the search capability of the system was not thorough.
Lastly, end users did not have access to the information they needed. The Finance team was constantly being asked for data and figures, which had to be manually pulled and distributed. Since this data was a snapshot, it became stale very quickly.
By implementing our integrated Finance solution, KDSB was able to achieve greater operational efficiencies, including easy access to real-time data, allowing for better decision making and increased employee productivity now that staff could access financial information without dependence on the Finance department. The new system not only provides access to this information, but also employs an intuitive user interface that makes finding specific data quick and easy.
After implementing their new solution, KDSB was able to immediately reduce their accounting costs quite drastically and realized significant improvements in efficiency.
The new solution virtually eliminated human errors of keying in information, and their reporting became a breeze! With a flexible system that could be updated to meet changing ministry standards, their month-end reports were able to be completed in a fraction of the time.
Overall, because of these new-found efficiencies, KDSB is now saving a considerable amount of money per year, which is being reallocated back into their services.
The Learning Enrichment Foundation (LEF) offers childcare services, employment and settlement services, skills advancement programs, language training, youth programs and entrepreneurship programs to individuals and families in northwest Toronto.
Their accounting software was unable to deliver on the complex reporting and information requirements of the foundation’s board and funders. Generating reports that documented the impact of funding across a wide variety of services required searching through paper files, huge amounts of manual effort and comparing spreadsheets side by side to track revenues and expenses across hundreds of contracts.
We helped LEF migrate to our enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution, one that includes finance, workforce management, payroll and employee scheduling.
LEF now has the power to expand their programs without growing their headcount. Their accounting staff now perform higher-value tasks than simply maintaining cumbersome spreadsheets. Their new ERP solution supports better decision making, helping the organization report back to the board of directors and funders to demonstrate the positive impact funding is having on the individuals and families they serve.