As a large, multi-faceted Christian organisation with an annual budget of $9.5 million, Anglican Youthworks Sydney required a totally integrated solution, allowing financial management, reporting and intelligent fundraising & marketing features.

“We felt Greentree was the most costeffective solution available for mid-market organisations that encompassed the customer relationship management module."

AYW did not have a full customer relationship management system to handle all their contacts and link to their financial information. They instead had three separate systems, one for financial management, a second for their bookings and another unconnected system for their fund raising activities. When evaluating the viability, and eventual replacement, of their previous financial system, AYW found that whilst the existing system allowed good data entry and processing, it lacked flexibility and scalability. This became clear when after five years the organisation had totally outgrown the incumbent system.

AYW carried out an initial review of four business software packages. Greentree was a competitively priced alternative with wide-ranging functionality and was chosen as it exceeded AYW’s specified criteria. There were a number of factors for the move to Greentree, however pricing was critical. For AYW the solution needed to meet their investment level, but make no compromises in delivering the functionality to develop their activities. Accountant, Fei Lim explains, “As we are a not for profit organisation, we have to be diligent in making sure the money is well spent. We are getting the best value from both the Greentree product and professional services offered by the Greentree Business Partner. We have had good account management from a number of consultants which have been supportive of what we want to achieve.” She continues, “Overall, AYW felt Greentree was the most cost-effective solution available for mid-market organisations that encompassed the customer relationship management module.”

Very, very, integrated

AYW chose to implement the Contacts & Relationships, Sales & Marketing, Bookings Management, Fund Raising and Counter Sales Modules from Greentree’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) suite, and was impressed by the integration to Greentree Financials, which strongly influenced the decision to choose Greentree. Fei comments, “Our goal was to have one fully integrated system. When the evaluation process first began, we were impressed that a CRM package directly integrated to a financial management system could provide such functionality, and match our unique needs as a fundraising organisation.” Greentree’s CRM integrates with their Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, Inventory, and General Ledger seamless and with absolutely no data duplication.

According to Fei, there were some obvious concerns about implementing a new system. Fei says, “The issues that concerned us were the networking and how the system would best fit our needs without too much customisation, given the complexity of our organisation.” Fei highlights a number of factors that reassured them about Greentree. “Some of us had heard of the heritage and success of Greentree’s CBA software and we had seen the Greentree demonstrations performed by capable and professional consultants. In addition, we received positive feedback from current Greentree users. With this in mind, we believed Greentree would deliver a solution to build on.” Fei believes the training program worked well for the 20 users, in terms of both pricing and the participants resulting capability with Greentree. “The training was quite intensive and valuable. We commend the staff at the Greentree Business Partner for their high level of proficiency and support.”

Very, very, responsive

Fei believes that Greentree is making a direct impact on the success of AYW by freeing up resources that were previously tied down by labour intensive administration. Fei explains, “We can now eliminate the following transactions: double handling of AP invoicing for head office and Outdoor Education and Conference centres and camp sites, import/export of New Zealand data, month end processing and monthly manual journals to General Ledger. We also have improved reporting.” She continues, “Greentree’s Fixed Assets is a great time saving module as we previously manually processed fixed assets. It’s a definite improvement. Our resources can be used for more effective marketing and channelled into other areas of our work.”

John Cross, Director of Business & Finance, says the change to Greentree has achieved their integration objective and streamlined processes. “It’s excellent to have an integrated system organisation-wide. We’ve seen many improvements in the financial system. Certainly the interface with Excel has been good to have and the month by month accounting has been improved overall. The visibility of the financial status is much better for the management team, who have been able to get more from the system.”

Very, very, co-ordinated

Greentree’s CRM provides AYW with a powerful base allowing effective management of lists, invitations and bookings for their Outdoor Conference Centres, training courses and conferences, as well as tracking all sales and service processes and communications for their 25,000 customer, prospect and donor records. “We are pushing the boundaries of CRM. We have extremely complicated CRM, fund raining and booking requirements. Our experience in the field means we require a sophisticated product,” explains John. Comprehensive and integrated coordination of events and resource bookings can be a major challenge for many organisations, so AYW rely heavily on Greentree’s Bookings Management system. Fei explains, “The integrated system we wanted has been achieved. Our management are able to see reports of the bookings, which are quite easy to do. We just have to work through the nitty gritty of the system now to fine tune it to our specific needs.”

“It’s excellent to have an integrated system organisation-wide. Month by month accounting has been improved overall and the visibility of the financial status is much better for the management team, who have been able to get more from the system.”

- John Cross, Director of Business & Finance

A future requirement for AYW is to be able to take bookings for their Outdoor Conference Centres via the internet. “We hope to have an on-line conference booking facility in order to streamline our bookings processes and reduce the manual entry and duplication,” describes Fei. With Greentree’s WebStore AYW now has a more automated system in order to remove such manual tasks. Their on-line book shop, eStore, enables them to target and generate sales from publication customers in Australia, New Zealand and overseas.

Greentree’s Sales & Marketing module provides a range of tools for full sales cycle and campaign management enabling each division to send multiple, highly targeted mailings regarding publications, training, camps and conferences monthly. Fei explains, “We use this module quite a lot. It’s a good system.” Fei continues, “We did not have this functionality before, so mailings in the past were managed by combining databases together which meant we always had many duplicates to deal with. With Greentree all our contacts are in one system so we’ve eliminated duplicates, saved on postage due to reduced errors and have a better delivery process. The result is a more efficient and cost-saving system and an overall improvement to customer service. We are on the right track.”

AYW is a major Christian publisher, particularly in publishing Sunday School and Scripture curriculum, to be used both in Australia and overseas. Their publications are sold by wholesalers either by mail-order or through their shop in Sydney, where cash sales are handled with Greentree’s Counter Sales. All new sales are immediately reconciled providing clear audit trails on all cash sales and also the team can see the total sales and produce reports on this data. “It is a good system. The functionality we have is ideal for our volume of customers and book sales. Our management are able to see accurate inventory and sales information,” describes Fei.

Reflecting on the past two years with Greentree John says, “Overall, we are happy and have seen improvements from having the integrated CRM and financial system we wanted to achieve. It’s been a positive move. We will keep building on our progress in specific CRM modules.”

About Anglican Youthworks

AYW has an annual budget of $9.5 million and has four main activities – publishing, outdoor education and conferencing, church resourcing and educational advocacy through the Anglican Education Commission. Based in Sydney, AYW is a major Christian publisher in Australia and overseas. AYW established and runs the Youth Ministry Training College, and also operates a range of camping ministries for young people.

For more information visit www.youthworks.net