Success Story: Queensland Ballet moves gracefully toward financial efficiency with Sage Intacct

Queensland Ballet implements Sage Intacct

Queensland Ballet is a world-renowned ballet company that has grown from a small state-based dance company to one of the world’s premier touring ballet companies. The company has over 60 dancers and tours extensively, performing for audiences across Europe and China. As the company has grown, so has its need for a more robust ERP and finance system to manage increasingly complex financial processes. The implementation of Sage Intacct allows the organisation to capture and present financial information efficiently by reducing manual processes.

Results with Sage Intacct

• Fostering a culture of continuous improvement to explore further enhancements and efficiencies in the new finance system
• Automation of tasks such as data entry and invoice processing
• Real-time updates to reduce manual processes and improve accuracy
• Intuitive dashboards to provide deeper visibility into financial data for faster, more informed decision-making

Setting up for long-term growth

Queensland Ballet had used their legacy finance system for many years. As the company grew, it became apparent that their increasingly complex financial needs were not being met by the existing system. Lack of visibility and detail to investigate and explain variances was seriously lacking.

In addition, more onerous reporting requirements for a range of stakeholders required better access to information, without having to undertake manual data manipulation to generate numerous and regular reports.

A multi-dimensional solution

To modernise their finance system, Queensland Ballet worked closely with a Sage Partner to undertake a comprehensive review of their internal needs, which included considering finance systems offered by different vendors.

After a thorough review and numerous scoping sessions with the wider team, Sage Intacct was selected as the ideal solution to meet the needs of the finance team. The multi-dimensional structure of Sage Intacct allows the finance team to capture information and present it to different stakeholders with varying reporting requirements, without the need to regularly export data to spreadsheets for report preparation.

Beyond that, streamlining of workflows and automating transactions to eliminate double handling of data and create efficiencies is helping the organisation reduce time spent on mundane tasks while improving accuracy of information.

A focus on efficiency and automation

From the initial workshops that were undertaken prior to the implementation of Sage Intacct, it was clear that the existing finance system was extremely inefficient. Finance processes were manual and required data to be entered across different systems, costing the finance team a lot of time, and increasing the likelihood of inaccurate information being presented in stakeholder reports.

The multi-dimensional structure of Sage Intacct captures information in a way that allows it to be presented to different stakeholders without having to use spreadsheets to manipulate data and manually create reports depending on the needs of various stakeholders.

Automation is crucial to avoid duplication of effort, allowing information to be entered once, with dashboards updated
in real-time to present a current and accurate view of the finances of the organisation.

Empowered decision making

Better and faster access to business-critical information is a vast improvement for the finance team and various managers right across the organisation who lacked visibility in real-time into the state of their finances.

Once Sage Intacct was implemented, information flow to various stakeholders and decision makers improved significantly. They are now empowered to make decisions faster and with a much higher degree of confidence that the information coming out of the finance system is accurate.

Outside the finance team, managers at Queensland Ballet with budget responsibility have a much higher level of awareness of their financial situation, enabling them to address variances more quickly and easily with accurate information available in real-time.

“One of the main benefits we’ve seen from the implementation of Sage Intacct is the ability of managers and those responsible for budgets to access real-time data to analyse transactions, explain variances and be more accountable for their expenditure.”

Geoff Walshaw, Chief Financial Officer, Queensland Ballet

“One of the visions I have is that finance teams should eliminate inefficient information flows by introducing automation. Now that Queensland Ballet has a robust finance infrastructure in place, we can turn our attention to broader systems and automating more workflows to continuously improve efficiency.”

Sage Intacct Implementation Partner

Customised support and continuous improvement

Sage Intacct has the flexibility to grow with Queensland Ballet, allowing the organisation to pivot and address their evolving needs efficiently. The Sage partner has fostered a culture of continuous improvement, regularly conducting workshops to help Queensland Ballet stay ahead of their evolving financial needs.

Ongoing collaboration and innovation facilitates further automation of workflows and processes, increases efficiencies and enhances the financial capabilities of the Queensland Ballet while the organisation continues to successfully grace stages all over the world.

The way forward

As an accredited and awarded Sage Intacct reseller, we view our clients’ success as our own and help them find their way forward. Offering ongoing support, training, and resources ensures that our clients maximise the benefits of Sage Intacct and stay abreast of the ever-evolving business landscape.

Having implemented Sage Intacct for many businesses in ANZ across diverse industries, our experience spans areas such as Software and SaaS, Family Offices, Non-profit Organisations, Financial Services, NDIS and Human Services and many other industries.

Please email us at Akuna Solutions for a free consultation and explore with a Sage Intacct implementation specialist how to leverage modern technology available today to future-proof your business operations.

Photo by Michael Afonso on Unsplash