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2019 Buyer's Guide to Accounting and Financial So ware 8 "We wanted a cloud–based solution with flexible, real-time reporting across multiple entities or locations–and Sage Intacct fit the bill perfectly," said Don Mackay, CFO at RAM. "Unlike other ERP systems, Sage Intacct is user-friendly and gives us the ability to easily grow without major headaches when it comes time to add new clinics or adapt to evolving reporting requirements. It also saves us the cost of on–premises hardware, training, annual upgrades, and maintenance renewals." With Sage Intacct, RAM has automated its accounts payable and accounts receivable processes, and now keeps track of this data in real-time. RAM is also able to easily apply transactions to its different philanthropic programs and clinics to enable less time consuming and more accurate project accounting. The finance team has reduced manual data entry by preparing simple uploads into Sage Intacct from its donor database and payroll system� As a result, they spend much less time closing the books each month, and can now run the financials in just a day or so as opposed to the 15 days the process took before. "Even as our transaction volumes increased by 30 percent, Sage Intacct allowed us to keep our finance team lean and avoid adding staff at the same pace as the rest of the organization. As a result, we're able to reallocate that headcount budget to programs that directly further our mission," noted Mackay. Results • Shortened monthly close by 2 weeks • Maintained lean finance team despite 30% transaction growth • Gained visibility into clinic costs for improved decision-making Evaluating Solutions Selecting a Solution: It's Still About Best Practices When it's time to evaluate vendors for your financial system, it's essential to remember that you are ultimately choosing a sophisticated so ware application. Even with cloud-computing implementations, the basic process of ve ing vendors remains unchanged. Consult the basic evaluation checklist below—then be sure to continue to the next section for additional questions you should ask cloud vendors� Gather requirements. Carefully define and document your needs. Get input and gain consensus from key users in finance and related departments across the organization. Do you need to integrate with CRM systems? Talk to sales. Do you need to deploy new purchase requisition processes? Talk to accounts payable. Identify top priorities and challenges. No system meets every need for every user. Determine which functionality and requirements are "musts" and rank them so that you can select the system which best fits your finance team's unique needs. Remote Area Medical shortened their monthly close by 2 weeks, gained access to timely financial data at both the consolidated and individual entity level, and maintained a lean finance team despite 30% transaction growth.