San Diego Futures Foundation Helps Bridge 'Digital Divide' with NetSuite

"With NetSuite, we have a professionally developed, integrated platform that provides us with the crucial elements we need today, is flexible enough to be customized for specific things we need and is backed by a company with heritage and understanding about the ERP market and customer needs."

—San Diego Futures Foundation

Results:

San Diego Futures Foundation eliminated a $50,000 annual expense previously committed to an outsourced payroll service
Non-profit agency has realized a 4x reduction in staff time spent on timesheet processing
Time required to allocate staff invoices to individual projects has been reduced from 8 hours to 30 minutes
Since going live in January 2010, NetSuite has supported San Diego Futures Foundation's growth from 14 to 36 employees and $2.5 million to $4.5 million in annual revenue
Business visibility, access to data and speed of processes have been vastly improved, enabling better control, management and fulfillment of mission to bridge "digital divide" with disadvantaged individuals
Gained new ability to monitor grant balances by the week, instead of by the month
Financial transactions related to inventory and services hit the general ledger immediately, vs. time-consuming, error-prone manual work

Challenges:

San Diego Futures Foundation wasted time and money with manual tasks of collecting, managing and analyzing data
Patchwork of QuickBooks, Salesforce.com, spreadsheets and other standalone applications impaired business visibility and efficiency
Substantial delays in ability to monitor grant balances and reconcile time and expenses to projects
Manual work and disconnected applications limited agency's ability to grow and expand service delivery to needy individuals, agencies and schools

Solution:

San Diego Futures Foundation selected NetSuite over QuickBooks Enterprise and Sage because of its superior capabilities, customizability to business needs and the NetSuite.org donation and discount program
NetSuite streamlines and accelerates agency processes for financials, inventory, point of sale, payroll, HR, contract management and CRM
Integration of Adaptive Planning software with NetSuite reduces the time needed to create budgets and provides more comprehensive budget vs. actuals reports
In-progress deployment of NetSuite SuiteCommerce will enhance marketing and discount online sales of computer equipment to low-income individuals and agencies