Case Study: A Review from the California Center for Sustainable Energy
DSD Business Systems has one purpose – to serve your company more efficiently than ever before. We recently had the pleasure of working with the California Center for Sustainable Energy (CCSE). This nonprofit organization works tirelessly to help individuals, businesses, and governments enjoy the benefits of clean energy. These groups are a positive force when it comes to protecting the environment, so it’s important to keep them running smoothly and effectively.
The Challenge
CCSE deals with a large amount of data daily. When DSD started the job, CCSE relied on four data collection and reporting systems. These programs (including Sage 100 ERP and additional applications for government contractors) dealt with financial statements for a variety of clients.
“I needed to closely monitor revenues and costs, identify what was happening, and provide updates for the executive and senior management teams,” said Elizabeth Wood, CFO. “But we didn’t have the proper tools in place.” According to Wood, revenue from labor was short of expectations. To monitor this problem and the other information, Wood was extracting and consolidating data from different systems for several hours each week. After that, she had to build reports manually across spreadsheets, opening herself up to mistakes and wasting valuable time.
Many businesses run into similar issues. In our technology-laden world, there’s no shortage of information about clients, costs, and more. However, having the data isn’t enough if there’s no way to collect, organize, and process it effectively. This problem compounds over time and can force small businesses, especially, to fall so far behind that they have little hope of recovering the missed data.
Building a Solution
At DSD, we don’t offer one-size-fits-all solutions. We know your company has unique needs, so we recommend systems based on your exact situation. For CCSE, the recommendation was clear. Since Wood was already running Sage 100 ERP, the perfect addition was Sage 100 ERP Intelligence Reporting. This system serves as a connector between the different applications to help streamline reporting.
The first step was to map out the processes CCSE uses. After that, the Sage program was able to pull out the relevant information quickly and easily. The system transformed this data into clear, direct reports with no chance of human error. What’s more, the Sage Intelligence Reporting works with Excel, meaning it was a comfortable environment for Wood. “I found Sage Intelligence to be very intuitive, and since all the usual Excel functionality was available, it didn’t take me long at all to get up and running.”
This type of seamless implementation is crucial for your business. We know you don’t have an abundance of time to acclimate to new programs – especially if you’ve wasted hours collecting and reporting data manually. That’s why we designed the Sage Intelligence Reporting platform to offer a sense of familiarity while providing unprecedented results.
Analyzing the Results
The results were fantastic, as expected when working with DSD Business Systems. The California Center for Sustainable Energy now enjoys fully automated financial reports and instantaneous access to the data. Because of this, they were able to reduce the amount of time Wood spends on manual entry. She said, “Not only am I saving several hours every month on just the financials, I also used Sage Intelligence Reporting to create half a dozen graphical dashboards that our executive and senior management teams use to visualize and pinpoint what’s happening at a very detailed level – literally by employee or on a contract‐by‐contract basis when needed.”
The automation and unprecedented detail had a huge effect for the CCSE. According to Wood, “With DSD Business Systems and Sage Intelligence Reporting, we literally improved profitability in the second half of our year to the tune of about $600,000.”
