Access, the mid-market consulting, software and solutions provider, has announced that ReZolve has chosen to implement its business and finance solution Access Dimensions, incorporating Accounting for Carbon Emissions (ACE). The key drivers for the not-for-profit social enterprise was the need for a new, integrated stock management and costing system for its furniture re-use centre and to be able to easily track its carbon footprint.
“We wanted to introduce more robust controls and to generate high quality costing and margin information; the solution will not only enable us to operate more efficiently, but also to produce the management reports that we require,” said Jackie May, finance manager for ReZolve, which manages projects with environmental and social aims, both regionally and nationally.
“As an environmental organisation we were also very taken with the carbon tracking tool. We’ve recently commissioned a report, confirming that we’re carbon negative but in order to maintain this, we’re introducing procedures to track carbon emissions information – ACE will make this much easier.”
Over the past two years, ReZolve has moved away from grant funding and has been able to generate 92% of its income from non-grant sources during 2009/10. “This means that we operate within very tight financial constraints, with just 38 staff,” said Jackie. “We did consider a number of alternative systems on the market but were unable to find a competitor which met our many requirements so closely.”
It was Access with its consulting expertise and the flexibility of Access Dimensions that won the day for the £1.5m social enterprise. Jackie commented, “The project team were extremely impressed by the expertise of the Access consultants, who were able to provide a customised solution for our very complex stock management needs - within hours of a getting an outline brief."
“We all felt that Access Dimensions stood out from the crowd and were particularly impressed with the extensive Excel integration and the use of smart-tags. What also appealed was the fact we’ll not need to rekey information. It will help us to reduce administration time so we can focus on analysing the data and making good business decisions. We’re a very lean organisation and working smartly is key to our success.”
With the customised stock solution, ReZolve will be able to track each stock item from cradle-to-grave and to generate accurate costing data, helping the social enterprise run more smoothly. Access Dimensions will also help to improve the quality of management information across the organisation.
Jackie concluded, “One of our difficulties in finding a system was that we’re not big enough to make a massive IT investment and yet our needs are too complex for a small business solution. Access worked closely with us to make the project cost-effective. Now, we’re going to have a totally integrated system for stock, costing and accounts which will enable us to be much more efficient.”
The implementation of Access Dimensions, which will be integrated with ReZolve’s postcode look-up software, is expected to be completed by November. ReZolve is also looking to implement Access Document Management at a later date.
