Forest YMCA standardises entire operation using NetSuite
Howard Lake | 29 May 2004 | News
London-based Forest YMCA has standardised all its business operations, from finance to customer relationship management, on NetSuite, the online integrated business package for small to medium-sized organisations.
Like many charities, Forest YMCA previously used DOS-based accounting, and a range of standalone spread-sheets and Access databases. In order to resolve its IT and business problems it evaluated software such as Microsoft Great Plains, Siebel CRM and SAP Business One, and chose NetSuite.
NetSuite claims that, within two months of implementating NetSuite for the charity’s 250 users, Forest YMCA has been able to eliminate 60 spearate departmental databases and cut IT costs “in half”, from £200,000 to £90,000 annually. It also says that with ‘dashboard’ access that offers one view of every YMCA client, supporter and partner, the charity is now “on target to increase turn-over from supporters by 70%”.
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James Nicola, volunteer ICT strategic director for Forest YMCA. “We investigated the use of various applications, but they were discounted because of the lack of functionality, the cost of managing disparate systems, and a complex and costly upgrade path. NetSuite offered us a much better value proposition with a high degree of integrated functionality, that has replaced the many disparate software applications we had. NetSuite is now used at the YMCA across the whole organisation from accounting to customer relationship management.”
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.