Farming Charity RABI, Modernises with Sage Intacct and Percipient
Sage Intacct supports digital transformation and enhances reporting at UK’s largest farming charity.
About RABI
The Royal Agricultural Benevolent Institution (RABI), farming’s oldest and largest charity, has served the farming community since 1860. RABI provides financial support, practical care and guidance to farmers, farmworkers and dependants across all generations.
Faced with a need to modernise through digital transformation, RABI embarked upon a strategy which involved moving IT systems to the cloud to instil scale and reduce costs.
Sage Intacct ticked all of our boxes, demonstrating capabilities to support evidence-based decision-making, streamline back office processes and ultimately help us to maximise funds to support beneficiaries.
A Cloud Native, Charity-Focused Platform
RABI selected Sage Intacct as its ERP platform, based on its leading-edge native cloud design, alignment with the nuances of accounting within charities, and ability to integrate with other systems.
“Sage Intacct ticked all of our boxes, demonstrating capabilities to support evidence-based decision-making, streamline back office processes and ultimately help us to maximise funds to support beneficiaries,” comments David Locke, Finance Director, RABI. “Similarly, Percipient impressed us from the outset with their dedication, charity sector expertise, product knowledge and consistency.”
The biggest tangible benefit since going live with Sage Intacct is that we have been able to expedite our month end to just five days, and the process is so much easier than before. Our first-year end since going live with Sage Intacct was much faster than before so we’re all seeing the benefits of a more efficient and easier process.
Speed, Transparency & Governance
Now live, the solution is delivering enhanced visibility, more streamlined operations and a more rigorous and transparent reporting framework to RABI.
“As well as being intuitive to use and easy to maintain, Sage Intacct is allowing us to report in granular detail the type of grant, beneficiary and impact of funding. This insight underpins transparency and accountability to all stakeholders of the charity, instilling trust and confidence within our community. A key benefit of its native cloud design is that Sage Intacct can be integrated easily with other systems, such as forecasting, expense management and CRM, for consistency and clarity,” David continues.
“The biggest tangible benefit since going live with Sage Intacct is that we have been able to expedite our month end to just five days, and the process is so much easier than before. Our first-year end since going live with Sage Intacct was much faster than before so we’re all seeing the benefits of a more efficient and easier process.
“We have 40 standard reports and through working with the Percipient team to ensure the account code structures are good, we have a system which is easy to understand and logical. Dashboards are working well, supporting cash flow well with 20 schedules and 10 departments we can easily view spend across all departments, and consolidate insights for an overall view of the organisation at any one time.
“We spend a lot of money on different projects so it’s important to have a means of recognising the respective spend and being able to report on this to our board and advisors easily and accurately. The project accounting capabilities within Sage Intacct are great in allowing us to manage this.
“Being able to closely monitor energy bills, for example, has the potential to save substantial costs in the current climate, as we can identify and act on areas in which we spot over usage or overspending.
“We are now one click away from an invoice and have a truly paperless office. In addition to the obvious efficiency benefits of a paperless office, the reduction in filing cabinets means that we have freed up an entire floor in our office.”
Adapting to a Remote Model
David explains: “The efficiency and transparency benefits came into their own in the remote working culture which followed the COVID lockdowns, as not only could we provide timely information to stakeholders as and when required, auditors could get access to Sage Intacct.
“This meant that we had confidence all operational and governance processes were being adhered to seamlessly and that relevant data could be exported where needed. The confidence this gave us an organisation was hugely valuable and the time savings have been vast.”
Percipient has been great as a partner – they have provided excellent support and training, and supported us through the change management, supporting our tight timescales and quest for best practice. We wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them to other not-for-profit organisations looking to embrace digital and modernise their operations.
Preparing for a Digital Future
Ultimately, Sage Intacct combines scale with flexibility, allowing organisations to transform their financials while minimising their IT footprint. For a charity such as RABI, this not only helps to keep overheads low but to maximise funds for the communities it supports.
“Percipient has been great as a partner – they have provided excellent support and training, and supported us through the change management, supporting our tight timescales and quest for best practice. We wouldn’t hesitate to recommend them to other not-for-profit organisations looking to embrace digital and modernise their operations,” David concludes.
“The best piece of advice I would give to any not-for-profit organisation looking to embrace digital transformation is not to fear it. There are huge benefits to be gained and while there are, of course, cultural, technological and process-orientated challenges along the way, the benefits of a more streamlined, transparent way of working are vast and far outweigh the change process to get there.”
Sage Intacct Partner for Non-Profits
If you would like to learn more about Sage Intacct, our work with RABI, or discuss how we can help your non-profit organisation, please get in touch or call us on 01606 871332.