Case Study: Commonwealth of Learning

The Problem
The Commonwealth of Learning (COL) has a mission to support open learning and distance education throughout Commonwealth countries and in developing nations.

At any given moment, COL has numerous projects underway around the world. COL ’s accountant, Ray Lee, needed a new financial system that could easily track each project based on established evaluation criteria by producing reports analyzing both cost and region. There are five regions COL monitors: Africa , Asia , Caribbean , Pacific Ocean and the COL region in its entirety. The COL Board of Governors reviews projects using the cost and region reports, allocating resources where they would be most beneficial.

Also, Ray needed the new system to be adaptable so that it could reflect new spending priorities as they occur.

The previous financial system could not produce the required reports. Ray found the whole reporting process cumbersome since it required manually extrapolating data using Excel – a two-day task.

The Solution
Ray began looking at new financial software options and was leaning towards Microsoft Great Plains . After listening to Ray explain his requirements, The RSC Group recommended Microsoft Navision as a better solution. RSC’s Vice President Brad Bushell felt Navision could better match COL ’s complex reporting needs. Navision has many unique capabilities well suited for COL such as the abilities to generate reports based on multiple dimensions (such as by program and region), create custom project reports, and allocate costs by regions.

The Challenges
COL had a short time frame to go live. Ideally, Ray wanted the new financial system to start on July 1, in sync with the new fiscal year. However, the project kick-off was on June 26, giving them a few days to meet the objective. Another catch was that the new server would not be available until July 12.

Ray was consumed by year-end wrap up and producing financial reports for an upcoming meeting in South Africa so he was unable to focus on the conversion until after these priorities.

RSC Group met these challenges using a unique strategy: RSC consultants Suzan Riedel and Bill Palmer decided to use the kick-off meeting to gather business information on COL , then build the COL databases and sample financial reports at RSC’s office. Once Ray was ready to focus on the conversion, they loaded the databases on the COL environment and provided training on the pre-built test database.

The Success
This “turnkey” approach worked successfully. The conversion from the previous financial system to Navision went smoother than expected with glitches being handled quickly. Ray said, “What RSC did really well was implement the system for us. They had it set up before they came here to train. That was a good, positive thing.”

Ray’s clear objective in producing relevant reports played a key role in the outcome. The selling point for COL was Navision’s unique analysis by dimensions capability, or the flexibility to produce reports without creating numerous sub-accounts. Ray had a good understanding of what he wanted from his financial software prior to the purchase. “You have to know your organization and what management wants in its reports to help guide you in designing your new accounting system.”
Now that he has finished designing the management reports, he is able to produce in seconds what used to take days.

The RSC Team
Ray was full of praise for the RSC team led by Suzan Riedel and Bill Palmer. They found a solution to working within a tight timeframe. In fact, the first cheque run occurred within 30 days of the project kick-off. And they managed to resolve any unexpected problems quickly. RSC developer Ken Hebden provided a few minor enhancements to tailor the Navision system and provide COL with even more value while remaining within the original project budget.

“Suzan, Bill and Ken were all quite thorough. Their knowledge of the product was excellent,” Ray said.

The Company
The Commonwealth of Learning , headquartered in Vancouver , B.C., is an intergovernmental organization representing 54 member governments. It encourages the development and sharing of open learning/distance education, knowledge, resources and technologies for people in member countries and throughout the developing world.