Customer Success Story
The Asia Foundation
Deltek Enterprise™ Suite brings project accounting philosophy to multi-million dollar nonprofit organization
The Challenge
While events such as the tsunami disaster and the democratic elections in Afghanistan capture the world’s attention, The Asia Foundation’s mission to develop a peaceful and prosperous Asia-Pacific region is more critical — and timelier — than ever. Yet the tsunami and the elections are just a few of this nonprofit organization’s endeavors in this region of the world.
The Foundation also supports dozens of ongoing programs that help improve governance and law, economic reform and development, women’s participation and international relations in Asia. Headquartered in San Francisco with other locations in Washington, D.C. and 17 Asian countries, the Foundation employs more than 450 full-time staff committed to addressing these critical issues on both a country and regional level. The organization has worked closely with private and public partners to promote its various programs for more than 50 years. In 2004 alone, the Foundation provided more than $72 million in program support and distributed almost 800,000 books and educational materials valued at $28 million throughout Asia.
From 1989 until 2002, the Foundation was using American Fundware® to handle its financial accounting needs. The DOS-based system, which was operated using a proprietary database, focused almost exclusively on grant-making. According to Financial Systems Manager Gary Knox, it became clear in early 2001 that the organization was evolving away from this model, and consequently the organization’s financial needs were evolving as well.
“We had really outgrown Fundware’s capabilities,” Knox said. “In 1989 when the system had been implemented, we were primarily a grant-making organization. Overtime, our focus has broadened to a more operations-oriented perspective, so we needed a system that could change with us.” In addition to not being a total project cost based system, Fundware had other drawbacks as well. As Knox explained, the system was time-intensive. Tasks such as developing and generating financial reports, and closing out the month took days and required complicated manual calculations.
“Because we were not able to track all our financial and project information in Fundware, we had to use Microsoft® Excel spreadsheets to track data such as contract and fund values, time charged to projects and labor costs,” Knox said. “It took four days on average to close out each month, because an employee always had to reference external spreadsheets and outside data to make sense of all our financial information. This caused a pretty significant delay, usually about three to four days, in getting critical business data to the Foundation’s managers.”
The Solution
Deciding to explore solutions geared more toward project accounting rather than fund accounting, the Foundation evaluated several network-based solutions to replace Fundware, including Solomon, Great Plains® and Deltek. The decision came down between Solomon and Deltek, but it soon became clear which solution was better suited to the Foundation’s needs. “Unlike Solomon, Deltek was a one vendor solution,” Knox said. “Our evaluation team liked Deltek best across the board, particularly because it was such a strong project accounting solution.”
The Benefits
The organization purchased the Deltek Enterprise suite, including back-end accounting solution Deltek Costpoint®, in October 2002, and had the system live exactly one year later. Today, the Foundation is using Deltek’s solution to handle its core financial needs including accounts payable, accounts receivable and general ledger, as well as projects, labor distribution, budgeting and reporting via Impromptu®.
The Foundation is managing about 100 different awards or grants at any given time using Deltek Costpoint. The system is helping the Foundation to handle the varying and complex reporting and billing requirements for government agencies such as USAID and the Department of State, private foundations and international funding from sources such as the European Union, the Netherlands and Great Britain’s Department for International Development.
“Deltek was a one vendor solution,” said Knox.
According to Knox, there were immediate and dramatic contrasts between Fundware and Deltek Enterprise. “It was a key to move away from a proprietary database to a network-based solution, so we could establish clear ownership of our own data,” he said. “In addition, it is now easier to access, capture and analyze critical financial, project and budget data, as the system’s project accounting capabilities are clearly a better match for our organization’s business model.”
Knox also points to immediate time savings with Deltek Costpoint. “In contrast to the four days it used to take to close out the month, we can now have just one staff member close out the month in just a day and a half, without needing to pore over manual calculations and spreadsheets. The spreadsheets are finally going away, and with them the risk for human error in our data.”
In addition, the Foundation has vastly improved both the detail and quality of its reports. The organization runs and distributes dozens of monthly reports to its field offices, managers and other key personnel, which drill into granular detail about specific transactions by project, actuals versus budget for each project and more.
“These reports are more accurate, timely and efficient now,” Knox said. “Along those lines, the reporting has improved because our data has improved. We couldn’t track costs as finely with Fundware, for example, as we now can with Deltek.”
| The Challenge | The Solution | The Deltek Advantage |
| The Asia Foundation needed a project accounting system that would grow with their organization. | The organization purchased the Deltek Enterprise suite, including back-end accounting solution Deltek Costpoint®, in October 2002, and had the system live exactly one year later. |
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Yet the biggest change, according to Knox, is the way the Foundation’s employees view their projects. “Our switch to Deltek was not just a change in a financial system, it was a change in our culture,” he said. “The system’s project-based functionality has allowed us to create levels of uniformity across all levels of our organization, in the way we quantify our projects and the way we add and manage our projects. It has forced people to think up front about how to lay out and organize their projects, and that’s a very positive change.”
Particularly within the project accounting group at the Foundation, organizational thinking has been restructured. “We now emphasize overall project management much more heavily,” Knox continued. “Before, there was lots of handholding with our field office accounting staff. Now that the system is much easier to use, the project accounting group is free to participate a lot more in toplevel planning and overall guidance.”
As a result, Knox said, program officers Foundation-wide are beginning to comprehend the value of the Deltek Enterprise solution. “People now trust the data, and consequently trust the system,” he said.