Trying to fit the business model into a straightjacket-like system, eventually got the better of one of Australia’s largest Construction and Allied industries apprentice training and education organisations so, they turned to Greentree for a ‘best fit’ accounting system.

The business situation

John Shenfield, Chief Financial Officer at BIGA explains that whilst the privately funded not-forprofit organisation trains and places apprentices with building and construction industry clients, it does not undertake its own building projects. Having inherited Job Pack, a vertical construction industry package, John says they struggled to get the information they needed from a system gearedup for construction jobs.

Basically, the business has two distinct areas; employment and training. The employment part of the business needs to collect, store, manage and maintain information about apprentices working on construction jobs and hired out to client companies. The training part of the business needs to collect, store, manage and maintain information about the academic learning and qualifications of individuals, who may also be BIGA apprentices.

Being a not-for-profit meant that budgetary constraints and the inherent complexity of specialist systems, pretty much dictated how much of the system John could replace. His wish list would have included most of Greentree’s financial suite but the beauty of its modular environment, meant he could purchase only what he needed.

Greentree pulls together data from multiple disparate systems

Since most of the systems BIGA uses are reasonably complex and by and large do what they are supposed to do, the decision was made to replace General Ledger since it was the most cost effective and easily understood. Greentree’s Open Database Connectivity handles the extraction of data from multiple proprietary sub-systems whilst Excel handles financial reporting. Of course, none of this works unless something tells all these systems what to do and how to do it and this is when Greentree’s flexibility for customisation and local support becomes strategic.

Customisation, back-up and support from Greentree partner – “strategic”

Working closely with the local Greentree partner, John says they came up with a customised interface to get data in and out of proprietary BIGA subsystems and in and out of Greentree. After a few teething problems the system is working well and John states that without the help, expertise, pre & post-implementation support of the Greentree partner, the whole project would have fallen over. Also of strategic significance, is Greentree’s tree analysis and John enthusiastically explains why this has stand-out value for him.

Tree analysis measures financial impacts on cash flows

Having managed profit-driven businesses prior to BIGA, John is intimately aware of the need to track and monitor profit streams and cash flows and this is where Greentree’s tree analysis really comes into its own. He says that although BIGA is a not-for-profit organisation, it’s absolutely imperative that revenue covers operational and administrative costs. John explains how he can create logical groups of data for analysis like for example, “which carpentry apprentices are working on a particular client’s site at which location and what’s the charge-out rate?”

The data can be used as parameters for reporting the financial impact on BIGA’s profits of say, relocating apprentices to other locations or allocating additional apprentices to any given client’s site. This is invaluable for ensuring BIGA accurately reports its financial position to management and stakeholders and continues as a financially viable entity.

Greentree “easy-on-the-eye” for users

John reports that users find Greentree to be intuitive, logical and easy-on-the-eye, which are attributes that cannot be underestimated. Greentree’s attention to the design and development of a visually appealing user interface ensures user uptake is quick and painless. Greentree has helped BIGA pull together a number of disparate systems in order to extract, group and analyse strategic data. Tree analysis leverages the familiarity of Excel to produce sophisticated reporting that informs management decision making and this has all been achieved within a tight budget. A sound ongoing working relationship with the Greentree business partner holds it all together for the future.