Exploring Great Plains has seen major benefits for leading research centre the A&RMC
The Austin & Repatriation Medical Centre needed an accounting system upgrade. It got this and much more from Microsoft’s mid-range Great Plains eEnterprise system. Reports now reveal vital insights, staff work far more dynamically, and managers can collaborate across the intranet – to great effect…
Melbourne’s Austin & Repatriation Medical Centre faced twin challenges: having to operate under Australia’s new tax system, while also responding to requests for better management reporting, so available resources could be allocated more precisely. The centre knew it was time to move on from its terminal-based accounting application.
The A&RMC is one of Australia’s leading teaching hospitals and a major medical research centre. It treats around 66,700 inpatients and 120,000 outpatients a year, from its three campuses.
Specialist services include treatment for heart conditions, spinal and head injuries, cancer and neurological disorders, including epilepsy and stroke, and aged care and rehabilitation services. It also undertakes liver and bone marrow transplants, as well as treating thoracic disease and stress disorders, and specialising in vascular and orthopaedic surgery, urology and psychiatry.
The prestigious University of Melbourne’s departments of Medicine, Surgery, Psychiatry, Psychology and Physiotherapy are all based at the A&RMC. All of the hospital’s medical and surgical departments are actively involved in research and often work closely with a number of prestigious research bodies that are also based at the Medical Centre. This makes the Austin & Repatriation Medical Centre one of the strongest medical research hubs in Australia, offering patient care at the very forefront of medical technology.
Antique accounting system
While A&RMC’s medical facilities and services are at the leading edge of technology, in early 2000, its accounting facilities were not. “We operated a character-based system that was inflexible and offered poor reporting,” says financial controller Andrew McDonald. “Finance department staff could use the application and understand the reports it produced, but managers struggled to derive any useful insights about where their budget was being spent, and on what.”
This inability to understand expenditure was an impediment to the smooth operation of the hospital. “To make the best decisions about how to use resources, managers need quick and easy access to accounting information, says McDonald.
“Under the old system, even relatively simple questions could take days to answer. We had to look in dozens of different places for information. Even a simple question, such as, ‘how much did we spend on prosthetic hips last year?’ could take a long time to answer.”
“Confidence in accounting and management was low because we struggled to get results.”
This was an important factor, making replacement imperative.
Cost-effective speed
A further complication at the time was the looming introduction – on July 1, 2000 – of Australia’s new tax system. The main feature of the new system, the Goods and Services Tax (GST), could not be processed by the legacy accounting application without an upgrade.
“We needed to satisfy our managers and also make sure that we could operate under the GST,” says McDonald. “And we had just five months to get there.”
McDonald and his team investigated a number of new applications, and settled on Microsoft’s Great Plains eEnterprise, after a review of several enterprise and mid-range systems. “We looked at Oracle and SAP, but felt they were cost-prohibitive and that there was no chance they would be implemented in time for the introduction of the GST,” says McDonald.
Such systems would also have required significant re-skilling of IT and accounting staff.
eEnterprise was chosen because of the software’s rich feature set. “We based our decision on the features of the software and the fact it was more usable than its competitors,” says McDonald. “It linked well to spreadsheets and other desktop software, and the Explorer interface for drill-down was simple to operate for our managers.”
Great Plains also offers an impressive range of functionality ‘out of the box.’ “We were impressed that the software had an electronic requisition module. This allowed us to replace paper requisitions with electronic transactions instead of forms, backed up by a workflow system to handle approval of expenditure,” says McDonald.
Cost was also a factor. “We purchased a complete new solution for the price our previous vendor wanted for an upgrade.”
Solution benefits
Implementing eEnterprise was accomplished in just six weeks and within budget, making A&RMC ready for the introduction of GST. “We filed our first business activity statement on time and were issuing cheques from eEnterprise the week it went live,” says McDonald.
“Before we started, we worried that a mid-range solution might not be enough to meet our needs. Today we know that it is well and truly enough.”
Another critical element of the rapid rollout was Microsoft Great Plains’ implementation partner, Professional Advantage.
“We were aware that while we were installing eEnterprise, Professional Advantage was also upgrading many other customers to prepare them for GST,” says McDonald. “So, we were impressed that they wore some of the pain and worked nights and weekends to get the job done. Their commitment was an important part of the success of the project, the ability to deliver it within budget, and the quality of our on-going experience.”
Intranet sharing makes budgets easy
The new system has also made life easier for those staff that manage budgets. They now make their calculations using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. “In the past, we had to perform manual re-keys whenever someone changed a budget,” recalls McDonald. “Now, managers use Excel to create their budgets and make changes. We import their changes, which automatically ripple out across the system. It’s fast and easy, which is important, as we can revise the budget several times a year.”
Finance managers can now create their own reports at any time as well, using eEnterprise’s intuitive interface, which allows access to all data without the need for IT department intervention. These reports are then published to A&RMC’s intranet, so they can be shared with staff on different campuses.
The effect of this new way of working has been profound, says McDonald. “The planning process is shorter and more accurate, which means resources can be allocated appropriately and efficiently.”
The new system has also slashed the amount of time required to perform bank reconciliations. “We now reconcile every day. The process is a lot less laborious; we’re always on time and, with automatic transaction-matching, we know that every transaction can be accounted for,” says McDonald.
eEnterprise has had a similarly impressive impact on the institution’s journals. “We can now import standing journals and attach a note to any journal entry, even a spreadsheet. This means that there is always an explanation for every item in a journal, which makes it easy to decide whether to approve an item or file it for later analysis,” says the financial controller.
Beyond internal e-business
A&RMC is also using eEnterprise’s procurement module to make all internal requisitions of supplies electronic. Used in this way, the software has greatly simplified the process of conducting internal transactions, while also integrating it with accounting processes across different departments.
“We used to hand-write requisitions and then hope they got looked at in time, or didn’t get lost. Now, requests go straight to the right person and can’t get lost. We even know when someone has been sitting on a requisition and not processing it,” says McDonald.
This functionality has proved such a success he now hopes to extend its use to external suppliers. “We have very good proof of concept for electronic procurement. Now we want to make it work for external suppliers. We’ll keep exploring other Great Plains modules as well.”
For more information
Professional Advantage
www.pa.com.au
info@pa.com.au
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