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Background
In 1994, Hollywood director Steven Spielberg established the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation (SSF), a nonprofit organization that depends on the generosity of individuals, private foundations, and corporations to finance its humanitarian activities. Inspired by his critically acclaimed film "Schindler's List," Spielberg created the foundation to honor and remember the victims of the Holocaust. Today, the Foundation's archive includes nearly 52,000 first person accounts of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses all over the world. In the United States, the entire Visual History Archive is electronically available at four major universities, and significant portions of it are already accessible in libraries, archives, and museums around the world. They foundation generates revenues estimated at $12.8 million annually.
Situation
When the Foundation first engaged SCG they suffered from a partially functional financial reporting infrastructure that had inefficiencies. The Foundation was using an earlier version of Microsoft Great Plains as their financial accounting application, and had the FRx Reporting module installed but not fully functional. Their greatest business pain was that financial and operational reports were generated in Excel and distributed manually. They sought to further unify and automate their business processes by upgrading to the latest version of Great Plains. The Foundation also wanted to take their financial capabilities to the next level by working with a more strategically positioned Microsoft Business Solutions provider. In seeking to forge a more strategic relationship, they contacted Microsoft Partners throughout the Southern California market, finally choosing SCG, who they viewed as the most strategically positioned Microsoft Partner that matched their needs.
Key Goals
- Improve Business Intelligence and reporting capabilities
- Upgrade Great Plains and other Microsoft Business software to latest versions; implement strategic tools
- Identify a more strategically positioned Microsoft Business Solutions Partner
Solution
In order to achieve the primary goal of improved reporting, SCG built a suite of financial and operational reports designed to be run individually or in a batch process. To provide a reporting services platform, SCG installed and configured FRx, including the FRx Report Server, FRx Desktop and FRx Launcher. The new system was then populated with migrated legacy data from Excel spreadsheets into SQL Server. Following the implementation, SCG trained users on the new system.
Results
The strategic solution that SCG implemented now allows users to schedule reports, set up automatic delivery of reports via email, and enable users to generate their own reports. The financial reporting tool, FRx Desktop, enables preparation of individual and consolidated financial statements for each of the individual departments. The Foundation now maintains budget and other mission critical financial information in Microsoft Great Plains. By improving the Foundation's reporting and distribution capabilities, the solution has substantially improved operational efficiencies.
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52,000 Members |
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$13m Annual Revenue |
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4 Universities |
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Frx Report Server |
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Great Plains |
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SQL Server |
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Improved Financial Consolidation |
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Scheduled Reports |
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End-user Training |
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