Making the case for a better future – SaaS ERP

Many non profit organisations find that their legacy finance and HR systems are no longer fit for purpose, it is holding back innovation. Siloed and outdated systems make it difficult and costly to automate and streamline processes, to gain insight across operations, consolidate data analysis, make insight-driven decisions. In fact, old systems actually end up costing more in terms of data security, lack of integration, poor data management, and, most importantly, the inhibition of scalability and growth. In addition, there are the hidden costs of recruiting and retaining employees, who become disheartened as the tools they use for work dont meet user experience expectations of today’s digital savvy workforce.

Where to start building your transformation plan

Managing change and improving productivity through cloud migration requires a thorough cost benefit business case and detailed implementation plan.

Similarly selecting the right ERP and HR solutions for your organisation, like any other large procurement exercise, requires a team of stakeholders to identify and agree their needs. They must make decisions on the solution that meets each business unit’s needs, their data strategy and system inter-operability options, for solutions that they are tied to. But it is not all about the technology, its both people and process you also need to consider.

You may need to engage experts in transformation to help guide you through the requirements part of the project to keep the plan on track.

ROI from transformation programs should include eradicating low-value tasks, working more efficiently across the organisation, reducing costs in technology and wasted time, and creating space for people to focus on the work that really matters.

Traditional cost metrics don’t make sense for SaaS

SaaS continues to outpace legacy on-premises solutions, not only in terms of flexibility, resilience, and adoption, but also security, capacity, and scalability. However, what is not so obvious that SaaS ERP improves both performance and employee experience as well — but it is enough to make the total cost of ownership more than worth it.

The 5 key discussions to have when building a good SaaS ERP Business Case:

1. Benefits
How will your organization gain operational benefit from SaaS ERP?

2. Costs
How will your SaaS costs differ from traditional solutions, in terms of hard costs, resources and support?

3. Risks
How do you approach and challenge the change resistance?

4. Innovation
How does your investment in SaaS ERP create greater transformation opportunities?

5. Value
How are you going to identify and measure the value to the organization over both the short term and long term transformation program?

Calculating SaaS costs can be more complex

When it comes to costs, cloud ERP is a trade-off. Some costs (like equipment purchasing, installation, and maintenance, specialist IT staff, power, cooling etc) are eliminated. But others are introduced – you’ll have to account for the fact that most subscriptions include (some) maintenance and hardware, while licenses don’t.

Support needs and help desk requests will decrease but do not disappear – you will still need some level of ongoing support – but you don’t need to resource it.

Governance and orchestration costs add up, especially if your operating solutions are fragmented. A good implementation strategy requires a thorough business solutions evaluation.

We’ve identified multiple areas across your organization in which process improvements and greater efficiencies can be realized with SaaS based ERP system. Ranging from halving the time needed for data capture to making grant applications easier to handle and more likely to succeed.

Budgeting and reporting – simplifying the budgeting process

By reducing the internal resources devoted to budgeting activities, it’s possible to realize significant savings. If 20 full-time earners spend 96 hours each per month on budgeting activities, it will cost the equivalent of $37500 per employee per year.

→	Time spent reporting (FTE hours/month)	1140
→	Annual loaded cost per employee ($)	37,500
→	Current annual reporting costs	252,000
→	Efficiency improvement post solution	25%
→	Annual savings ($)	63,000
→	Impact Life (months)	13 - 60
→	Average monthly margin increase ($)	4,200

Automating processes

A 25% improvement in the efficiency of the process – achieved via a single system with a template-driven approach that also simplifies compliance procedures – could result in over $8000 in savings per month (and give your employees an extra 3 working days a month in which to make an impact).

→	Time spent on budgeting activities	1920
→	Annual loaded cost per employee ($)	37,500
→	Process efficiency improvement with solution	25%
→	Impact Life (months)	25%
→	Average monthly savings ($)	8,533

Streamlined compliance and reporting

Creating transactional and summary reports and analysis is often made harder than it needs to be by disjointed systems and data storage.
Unit4 reduces the average time spent on data retrieval, collation, and preparation by making it possible for users to make their own reports simply and quickly without relying on IT for resources.

→	With 30 FTEs working on average 38 hours a month (a total of 1140 hours per month), at a loaded cost of $37,500 per employee, a 25% improvement in efficiency will potentially result in savings of $63,000 per year – giving every employee back an extra 10 hours a month.

Saving through smarter project management

Effective project management is vital in controlling costs and ensuring impact. Unit4’s solution helps project managers deliver results faster by reducing time spent on activities via increased automation, consolidating invoicing processes, auto-generated templates, self-service requisitioning, and integrated cash receipting.

With 28 FTEs working 60 hours each per month on project management, a 25% increase in efficiency represents a saving of nearly $8,000 per month.

→	Current project management commitment (FTE hours/month)	1680
→	Annual loaded cost per employee ($)	39,500
→	Efficiency improvement post solution	25%
→	Hours saved per month	420
→	Impact Life (months)	13 - 60
→	Average Monthly Savings ($)	7,865

Why Unit4 ERP

Our nonprofit industry model for implementation has been developed to get your teams up and running with their new solution quickly – ensuring that the system fits their needs rather than forcing it to fit their needs, with sector-specific best practices and support for all regulatory requirements available from the start.

Using this approach we can help your organization implement a new ERP system 50% faster than the industry average, and with up to 50% less effort from your teams.