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Green Bay Diocese Looks to Microsoft Dynamics NAV to Replace 15 Accounting Solutions


WEBWIRE

St. Therese of the Little Flower chooses Microsoft Dynamics NAV with Serenic Navigator to provide accounting and communication services for 160 parishes in the Catholic diocese.


REDMOND, Wash. — May 2008 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that St. Therese of the Little Flower Inc., which provides accounting and communication services to the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay, Wis., has selected Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Serenic Navigator to centralize and standardize accounting for all 160 parishes and 62 schools in the diocese.

The Microsoft Dynamics NAV technology, embedded with Navigator, an application from Serenic Software Inc., will replace 15 types of software acquired independently by the parishes and schools. The previous software included Sage Accpac, Sage BusinessWorks, Sage MAS 90, Peachtree by Sage, CAD Shareware, CheckMark MultiLedger, Intuit QuickBooks and Quicken.

Microsoft Dynamics NAV is a business management solution for small and midsize organizations. It helps simplify and streamline highly specialized business processes, providing industry-specific functionality relevant to the local needs of regional operations. Serenic Navigator, a Microsoft Dynamics NAV-embedded solution, builds upon the Microsoft solution to provide critical functionality such as fund accounting and management of organizational budgets to nonprofit organizations such as the diocese.

Diocesan, parish and school leaders selected Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Serenic Navigator after reviewing 40 industry-specific software solutions.

“We needed to standardize our accounting for all diocesan parishes and schools,” said Paula Nault, financial systems consultant for St. Therese of the Little Flower. “The solution had to be scalable to serve diverse needs while providing a standard chart of accounts structure and standard reporting capabilities. Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Serenic Navigator provide those capabilities at a price we can afford.”

Together with Serenic Navigator, Microsoft Dynamics NAV software will ease communications challenges the diocese had been experiencing and help it overcome the problems of compiling multiple reports from parishes and schools with different accounting capacities. Moreover, pastors and other leaders are now taking on more parishes and schools and need a common accounting system to manage them. In addition, access to technological expertise may not be readily available in many parishes.

To resolve these issues, St. Therese will deliver its Microsoft Dynamics NAV with Serenic Navigator accounting capabilities through the Web, so that all parishes will communicate via the Internet, with a common database accessible online.

To implement the solution, St. Therese is working with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner eSoftware Professionals (eSP), headquartered in Portland, Ore. eSP will implement the solution and activate a complete range of accounting functions, including general ledger, accounts payable and receivable, purchase orders, bank reconciliation, budgeting, direct deposit, cash management, allocations, and fixed assets, to be used by all parishes. The Microsoft Dynamics NAV and Serenic Navigator solution will be configured according to accounting needs so that each parish and its school will have access only to the functions it needs and wants.

St. Therese of the Little Flower and the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay look forward to a number of anticipated benefits that the solution will provide:

• Better time allocation. With an automated, integrated and standardized accounting system for the parishes and schools, more time can be devoted to the vital ministries of the church. Microsoft Dynamics NAV with Serenic Navigator will make the administrative side of the pastors’ and other leaders’ work more manageable. More timely and accurate reports will be available to church leadership, finance councils, parishioners and parents of school students. The integrated database allows information to become more accessible to the diocese to save time in gathering data.

• Cost savings. The diocese’s parishes and schools expect to be able to reduce redundancies, save money on maintenance and no longer develop expensive work-around solutions that were needed with its 15 software solutions. In addition, parishes and schools will avoid the potentially catastrophic expense of losing data after a physical server problem. All the data now will be backed up in a Web-hosted environment from the integrated database. By implementing a single hosted solution, the diocese expects to eliminate the costs involved in backup management, software updates and additional IT infrastructure at the parish level.

• More reliable access to more complete information. St. Therese expects to be able to provide access to advanced technology solutions that individual parishes may not have been able to afford on their own, and expects that more information will be available in real time. In addition, by standardizing the chart of accounts and providing template report formats for the parishes and schools, St. Therese expects to provide stronger reporting to finance councils, boards of education and the diocese.

• Time savings. Instead of needing to prepare consolidated reports manually, the diocese will benefit from the Microsoft Dynamics solution’s enterprise reporting capabilities. These are expected to significantly reduce the time needed to communicate financial information from the parish, as well as from school leadership.

• More accurate data. Previously, parishes and schools produced reports for the diocese by printing their data and then manually completing paper forms or by completing online data questionnaires. Now, with its import and export capabilities, Microsoft Dynamics NAV with Serenic Navigator expects to eliminate duplication of data entry and the inherent entry errors that can occur.

• Better planning. The parishes and schools will be able to allocate their funds more effectively throughout the year with the cash flow reports and budgeting tools provided by the solution. Now they have the tools to determine, for example, if dollars will be available to fund a youth ministry program, based on forecasts.



“Much like any other business, the day-to-day operation of a parish has grown in complexity over the years,” said Deacon Tim Reilly, director of administration for the diocese. “Through the collaboration of our parish, school and diocesan leaders, we are adopting solutions such as Microsoft Dynamics NAV with Serenic Navigator to help us streamline important business functions and use technology to our advantage.”

St. Therese expects the combination of Microsoft Dynamics NAV technology and Serenic Navigator functionality to enable parish and school staff and volunteers alike to spend more time on their most important efforts.

“For organizations that have a large number of operating centers, as does the Catholic Diocese of Green Bay, Microsoft Dynamics products can unify their data to support fast, accurate and insightful decision-making,” said Michael Park, corporate vice president for Microsoft’s U.S. Dynamics business. “Microsoft Dynamics helps organizations plan their futures and advance their missions by furnishing a clear and consistent view of information across the enterprise.”



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