Situation
Based on the foundational principle that every human life has
value, St. Vincent 
Catholic Charities enhances the quality of
life for individuals and families of all backgrounds and origins by providing
emotional, physical, and spiritual support. (Figures 1 and 2 are indicative of
the impact St. Vincent has in human lives.)
Among other services, St. Vincent Catholic Charities is a leader in providing
refugee and resettlement assistance in the Lansing, Michigan
area. Services include arranging housing, healthcare, and community
orientation. The nonprofit organization employs approximately 275 people and is
funded through donations, grants and government dollars.
After Hurricane Katrina hit states in the U.S. Gulf Coast in
late August 2005, thousands of evacuees in Louisiana and neighboring states needed to
be relocated. The governor of Michigan and
other state and local officials met to plan their response and chose St.
Vincent Catholic Charities to lead resettlement efforts for the Lansing, Michigan
area. The City of Lansing contracted with St. Vincent to provide these services. The decision was
largely based on St. Vincent’s refugee
resettlement experience, which is a model for other organizations.
Says Cheval Breggins, Director of Marketing and Community
Relations at St. Vincent Catholic Charities, “We are considered experts in the
resettlement process because of our refugee program. In many ways, we were
ready to handle hurricane victims because of our refugee resettlement model and
case management experience, which includes an initial assessment of peoples’ needs,
helping them find housing and employment, and getting them oriented to the
community—transportation, medical care, grocery stores, schools, and so on.”
When St. Vincent Catholic Charities incurs an expense on
behalf of a constituent, the charity bills the appropriate funding agency. Since
2004, the charity’s Refugee Services Program has relied on the Project
Accounting module in Microsoft® Business
Solutions–Great Plains®, now part of
Microsoft Dynamics™, to track and bill for
expenses. With more than 100 hurricane evacuees expected to arrive, St. Vincent needed to quickly implement a solution to
track funding sources and expenses.
Solution
In 2002, St. Vincent Catholic Charities looked for
easy-to-use accounting software that could flexibly track and report
information at multiple levels, had well-integrated modules, provided custom
report writing, and integrated with the Microsoft Office System. St. Vincent also wanted to purchase the product from a company
that would provide support locally. Microsoft Certified Partner Maner,
Costerisan & Ellis, P.C. (MC&E) introduced St.
Vincent to Microsoft Great Plains, which the charity deployed that
same year.
St. Vincent uses the broad
functionality of Microsoft Great Plains to manage human resources, payroll,
accounting, and more. In 2004, St. Vincent
implemented the Project Accounting module of Microsoft Great Plains to track
and invoice for costs for its Refugee Services Program.
Most recently, working with MC&E, St. Vincent Catholic
Charities implemented a customized version of the Project Accounting module in
Microsoft Great Plains to support evacuees of Hurricane Katrina.
In just over one week, the combined team from MC&E and St. Vincent implemented and customized Project Accounting
to support the Katrina evacuees. This timeline met St.
Vincent’s need to get a solution in place before it began
incurring expenses that needed to be tracked. The team applied its prior
experience working with Microsoft Great Plains and, in particular, Project
Accounting.
According to Andrea Seyka, Chief Financial Officer at St. Vincent Catholic Charities, “MC&E responded
quickly. Matt Mason, Consultant, worked with our Staff Accountant, Dares
Nopareporn, to get things set up and clients loaded into the system. We didn’t
have a lot of time, but we worked really well with the time we had and made it
work.”
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“You can use Great Plains
and, particularly, Project Accounting, in ways that you wouldn’t expect.
Project Accounting is very flexible.”
Matt Mason, Consultant, Maner, Costerisan &
Ellis, P.C.
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For assisting Katrina evacuees, there are multiple funding sources,
including donations and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) funds.
Figure 1. St. Vincent
Catholic Charities works to assist people in unfortunate circumstances.
(Photo subject is not an actual constituent.)
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Using Project Accounting, the team was able to tailor Microsoft
Great Plains for applicability to the Katrina evacuee project by changing names
of fields to fit the need. For example, they revised:
n
“Customer” to “Funding Source.”
n
“Contract” to “Household.”
n
“Project” to “Household member.”
The team also needed to satisfy internal and funding agency
reporting requirements, including the need to print reports on prescribed
forms. St. Vincent Catholic Charities used Microsoft Great Plains Report Writer
to customize some of the reports that are a component of Microsoft Great
Plains. The remaining reports are run using Crystal Reports, which is
integrated with Microsoft Great Plains.
The agency runs Microsoft Great Plains on the Microsoft Windows® 2000 Server operating system, with the Microsoft
Windows Server™ 2003 Standard Edition
operating system supporting the agency’s domain controller and file server. On
its workstations, St. Vincent runs Microsoft
Windows XP Professional and Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003. The
integration across the set of Microsoft products enhances user experience and
keeps IT administration costs low.
Benefits
The
recovery and restoration continues in the Gulf States, and in the life of every person
affected by Hurricane Katrina. Some evacuees supported by St. Vincent in Lansing have returned home
and are living independently again; others have resettled and are also
supporting themselves. Approximately 70 hurricane victims continue to receive
some services from St. Vincent Catholic Charities. While those people will eventually
become self-sufficient again, St. Vincent will
continue to provide services through its other programs for approximately 13,000
clients annually. According to Seyka, “With Microsoft Great Plains, St. Vincent can rely on a solid solution that meets the
agency’s current and future needs for business management, project accounting,
human resources management, and more.”
Flexible, Customizable Project Accounting
The flexibility and ease-of-use of Microsoft Great Plains
enabled St. Vincent Catholic Charities to apply an off-the-shelf solution and
tailor it to meet the agency’s needs.
“We needed to track and report costs by time period, client,
household, and funding source. Microsoft Great Plains was a great fit. Once we
had set up accounts and clients, even someone without a lot of accounting
experience could step in and enter the necessary data,” says Nopareporn.
Speaking from a consultant’s perspective, Matt Mason says, “You
can use Microsoft Great Plains and, particularly, Project Accounting, in ways
that you wouldn’t expect. Project Accounting is very flexible.”
Simpler Tracking and Compliance
Figure 2. St. Vincent Catholic Charities serves as a
conduit between those able to give and those in need, regardless of their
background. (Photo subject is not an actual constituent.)
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Microsoft Great Plains helps St. Vincent Catholic Charities to
track costs, match them easily to funding sources, and comply with internal and
external reporting requirements—which often differ from one funding agency to
another.
“Agencies sometimes impose spending limits, for example, a
certain amount for housing,” says Seyka. “Microsoft Great Plains helps us
ensure that spending is within allowable limits. It also helps us satisfy
periodic reporting to agencies and ad-hoc reporting as part of day-to-day case
management work. With Microsoft Great Plains, we can pull information very
quickly and efficiently.”
Valuable Experience and Partnership
St. Vincent Catholic Charities benefited by enlisting the
services of a knowledgeable Microsoft partner. Seyka remarks, “One of the
reasons that the software implementation was successful is that MC&E knew
the software and understood us, our services and our accounting and reporting
requirements. They really helped us identify the affordable software that would
meet our unique needs and tailored it cost-effectively.”
MC&E continues to serve St. Vincent Catholic Charities
with ongoing user training and additional customization of its Microsoft Great
Plains implementation.
St.
Vincent Catholic Charities expects to build upon its experience with Microsoft Great
Plains and to lower the learning curve for users and IT staff alike. Says
Seyka, “We benefited from being
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“We benefited from being able to apply our experience
with Project Accounting …. [I]t’s quite possible that we’ll transfer the
experience and time investment … to programs yet to be developed.”
Andrea Seyka, Chief Financial Officer, St. Vincent Catholic Charities
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able to apply our experience with Project Accounting for Refugee
Services to the hurricane evacuee project. Because we serve 13,000 clients a
year, it’s quite possible that we’ll transfer the experience and time
investment on this solution to other existing clients and programs and to
programs yet to be developed.”
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© 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Microsoft, Great Plains, Microsoft Dynamics, the Microsoft Dynamics logo,
Windows, Windows Server, and Windows Server System are either registered
trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States
and/or other countries. All other
trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Document published February 2006
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For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and
services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In
Canada,
call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers
who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone
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go to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about Maner, Costerisan & Ellis,
P.C. products and services, call (517) 323-7500 or visit the Web site at:
www.mcecpa.com
For more information about St. Vincent Catholic
Charities, call 517-323-4734 Ext. 1201 or visit the Web site at:
www.stvcc.org
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Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics is a line of integrated, adaptable
business management solutions that enables you and your people to make business
decisions with greater confidence. Microsoft Dynamics works like familiar
Microsoft software such as Microsoft Office, which means less of a learning
curve for your people, so they can get up and running quickly and focus on
what’s most important. And because it is from Microsoft, it easily works with
the systems that your company already has implemented. By automating and
streamlining financial, customer relationship, and supply chain processes,
Microsoft Dynamics brings together people, processes, and technologies,
increasing the productivity and effectiveness of your business, and helping you
drive business success.
For more information about Microsoft Dynamics, go to:
www.microsoft.com/dynamics
