Overview
This telephone conferencing company is a leading global provider of audio, video and Web collaboration services. Based in the United Kingdom, and with a significant presence in the United States and Asia Pacific, the business provides conferencing solutions to some of the largest companies in the world.
Background
The company was acquired by a global telecommunications company in 2008, in order to expand their videoconferencing capabilities. Telecommunications billing and financial management involves a large amount of data, and was a concern with the increased volume in the new, larger company. Some expected that the transaction would result in migrating from its Microsoft Dynamics® GP financial management platform to the Oracle® system used by the parent enterprise.
They were experiencing a significant amount of growth, with the increased volume straining existing integration points. Two critical integrations were the importing of accepted quotes from the sales system into Dynamics GP as orders, and the importing of the actual conferencing minutes and billings from the operations system for tracking as receivables transactions in Dynamics GP.
Project
The management team sought the most beneficial and cost-effective solution for the company moving forward and engaged RSM for insights. The team worked with them to determine their requirements and helped them understand the capabilities of Dynamics GP. It was decided that the company should remain on Dynamics GP, and a business case was presented to support this conclusion, resulting in significant cost savings and enhanced operational capabilities.
Dynamics GP possesses some capabilities that Oracle does not, including sophisticated revenue recognition provided through the Binary Stream Advanced Revenue and Expense Deferral module for Dynamics GP. RSM recommended and delivered other strategic projects to help ensure Dynamics GP would continue to support their growth. Other facets of the project included:
- The existing quotes and billing minutes imports were replaced with automated integrations based on eConnect, which could manage large volumes of data quickly and without manual intervention.
- A custom integration from Dynamics GP to the Royal Bank of Scotland was implemented to streamline the automated international vendor payments process.
- As they continued to grow, RSM helped select and implement a requisition and expense management and approval workflow tool based on SharePoint and integrated with Dynamics GP.
Outcomes
As a result of the software evaluation, RSM identified the most effective course of action for the telephone conferencing company's U.S.-based operations and uncovered opportunities for increased integration and productivity with a more inclusive ERP system. Some of the positive results that the assessment led to include:
- Avoiding a migration to Oracle that would have cost $1 million for their division alone.
- The efficiencies gained through Dynamics GP enabled the company to increase the volume of its business, without the need for a corresponding increase in staff, resulting in greater profitability for the company.
- Standardizing finance and procurement systems with automated requisitioning and expense reporting on one platform allows for greater governance, as well as reporting efficiencies, eliminating the need for multiple systems or more expensive platforms. The open design allows for seamless integration with conferencing systems, an integral part of the business.
- Dynamics GP's open architecture enabled the company to integrate with its other systems, which was clearly more efficient than the manual input at the company's UK operations and a capability that was not available feasible with the Oracle system.
- Dynamics GP provided real-time updating, while Oracle's batch processing capabilities did not provide immediate access to information.
