Aberdeen Performing Arts Put Digital Centre Stage with Sage Intacct and Percipient
New cloud deployment sees one of the largest performing arts organisations in Scotland to enhance data analytics, expedite reporting, and empower budget holders.
About Aberdeen Performing Arts
Aberdeen Performing Arts is a multi-award winning, multi-site, arts charity right at the centre of North-east of Scotland. Its three iconic city centre venues; His Majesty’s Theatre, the Music Hall, and the Lemon Tree, are all on a national and international touring circuit for the performing arts and a vital part of Aberdeen and Scotland’s cultural landscape.
A Modern Approach
With three very different venues and a growing customer base, Aberdeen Performing Arts had outgrown its previous Sage 50 financial management system. As well as the system being overwhelmed and relying heavily on manual workarounds to process, its propensity for errors left the organisation open to risk.
Large transaction volumes, seven festivals per annum, a mix of charity-based and trading entities, and many moving pieces when it comes to booking acts and events, all converged to put pressure on a limited finance team.
Aberdeen Performing Arts needed a modern, dynamic cloud-based platform that could deliver intelligent insights, analysis and reporting, allowing the team to move away from excel and embrace a more intuitive way of working. The system needed to deliver greater visibility of costs and income at a venue-specific level as well as in consolidated accounts, in order to understand the cash position of each entity and report appropriately.
As Matt Godfrey, Director of Finance and Commercial, Aberdeen Performing Arts, explains, there were three key drivers underpinning its business case for digital transformation. Firstly, the board had set out a requirement for greater data analysis, and more integrated insights. Secondly, in line with regulatory requirements for detailed, cohesive financial information, a system was needed to execute this in an organised, efficient manner. And finally, the board wanted to give budget holders the autonomy to manage their cost bases, levers and cashflow, empowering them to manage their own P&L.
New Levels of Performance
Having selected and deployed Sage Intacct, Aberdeen Performing Arts’ financial management has transitioned from a manual one-dimensional set of processes to a dynamic, seamless operation. The team can now look at their accounts by department, venue, event, or month, with the option to adjust and move things as mandated by the board or regulatory bodies for complete transparency and visibility.
“We were seeing benefits only a few weeks in through time being freed up to refine operations. Data capture is so much easier, and accounts payable hugely faster,” Matt adds.
“We can now get data on all kinds of areas and flex to report accordingly. The system is so intuitive we can do this in a few clicks. Month end is easy, and we have substantial drillability to get a deeper understanding of the detail behind the headline figures.”
Percipient’s in-depth knowledge and experience of both hospitality and the not-for-profit (NFP) sector meant that they understood the dynamics, challenges, and financial management requirements of our organisation. The value they added from the outset was truly impressive.
A Focused Methodology
“Percipient’s in-depth knowledge and experience of both hospitality and the not-for-profit (NFP) sector meant that they understood the dynamics, challenges, and financial management requirements of our organisation. The value they added from the outset was truly impressive. There was no hard sell, just a highly friendly, open, transparent, knowledgeable, and well-prepared team from day one. They had clearly taken time to learn about us and understood our business straight away, so we didn’t need to spend time at the start explaining what we did. Because of that joint understanding, we could scope the project incredibly robustly, instilling diligence and reducing any room for the project to be derailed at any point.
“A very focused, robust methodology meant that we ensured the right amount of time was spent on the right areas and complexities. The Percipient team challenged some of our processes, which, because of their strong grounding in finance, was hugely valuable as they encouraged us to look beyond what we thought we needed to get to precisely what we needed. It was a genuine pleasure working with them and we got so much more than a software deployment – it was true consultancy of the highest level.
“Percipient undoubtedly delivered more than we expected and in tandem with Sage Intacct, this project has been an enormous success. The wider team couldn’t believe how smooth it was, and the fact that it took a matter of weeks to go live was a bonus.”
Testament to the collaborative approach which underpinned this project was that in the reflecting phase, there was very little the team would have changed, something that in my many years and six or seven enterprise software deployment projects, is a first.
A Vibrant Future
Looking ahead, Aberdeen Performing Arts’ goal is to launch month-end reports dynamically without the need to e-mail them at all. They also plan to roll Sage Intacct out to budget holders as soon as the team feels 100% au fait and proficient in all aspects of the system.
“Testament to the collaborative approach which underpinned this project was that in the reflecting phase, there was very little the team would have changed, something that in my many years and six or seven enterprise software deployment projects, is a first,” Matt concludes. “It could be said that it was boring which in any other scenario could be construed as a negative, but for a software deployment is undoubtedly a massive win. We’re excited to build on this to pursue our next chapter and look forward to working with Percipient to embrace whatever comes next.”
Multi-Award-Winning Sage Intacct Partner
If you would like to learn more about our work with Aberdeen Performing Arts, or the benefits of Sage Intacct for your organisation, get in touch or call us on 01606 871332.