Save the Children

Background

Save the Children is a leading charity for children with a turnover of £100m+ in 2000/2001. Founded in 1919, it is active in over 70 countries dealing with emergency relief in disaster and conflict zones, as well as long-term development of education, health and welfare programmes for children. Save the Children wrote the first children’s charter, which led directly to the UN convention on the rights of children.

50% of Save the Children income is raised in the voluntary sector, and 40% from grants. Save the Children directs 85% of its income to charitable work, spends 13% on fundraising and publicity and only 2% on administration. Thus judicious spending on IT to deliver efficient and effective administration has been a vital element of Save the Children’s development strategy.

The Save the Children relationship with Entity goes back to 1993 covering:

IT strategy development
development and support of field financial tools
development of financial modelling tools
programming, and interface developments
e-mail enablement
capacity planning
hardware purchase negotiation

It is the development and support of field financial tools, which is the subject of this case study.

The Business Plan and Objectives

Since 1995, Save the Children has worked with Entity to deliver a number of low cost, but effective field tools for financial budgeting and control. In particular, Entity has undertaken three sub-projects:

The financial control project that provides for the timely submission of account details for programmes/projects, their alignment with the central accounting records in head office and financial reporting.
The field budget entry facility that was written to complement the Sun Accounts package and provides the ability to conceive, save, modify and finally submit project/programme budget for central approval and submission to both accounting facilities - Sun in the field and subsequently in the central ledger (at the time JBA, now PS Financials).
The financial and business model where Entity compiled a complete business model for SC UK that dealt with budget planning scenarios, the use of free and restricted money, the funding of the field and HQ infrastructure, etc..

The objectives were to automate much of the work related to the application of funds to the various projects, across the many countries, and monitor and control the spend for reporting to grant agencies and sponsors.

The specific goals for the project were:

to speed up the processes of budgeting and reporting
to reduce the number of errors and discrepancies
to improve the effectiveness of decision making by delivering more timely information
to allow the field staff to bid quickly and clearly for new project funding
to improve the budget modelling for strategic planning

Entity’s Role

During the initial phases of the project, Entity’s role covered:

gathering the requirements
envisioning the overall solution
designing and building the various software components
designing and building the interfaces to the head office system
training the Save the Children team of implementers
supporting roll-out and implementation

Once the first phase of the field control tool had been delivered and implemented in 1996, Entity took on the role of on-going support, which continues to the present. This support includes filtering business and accounting issues from system and technical issues and involves receiving the support calls from all corners of the globe, prioritising, allocating the necessary resources for resolution and analysing the root cause to prevent recurrence.

Entity has worked very closely with Save the Children staff, including working at the Save the Children offices and field locations, which reflects Entity’s partnership philosophy. By maintaining a close understanding of the clients business, Entity is well placed to provide quick and effective advice on business solutions.

The Benefits to Save the Children

The business benefits gained by Save the Children were:

Productivity
A reduction in the volume of work involved in Finance Accounting staff released for more proactive work.

Quality
More accurate and timely reporting of field financial situation. Head office made better decisions sooner, based on the real data.

Value for Money
Cost effective solutions were delivered for the field locations, allowing Save the Children to maximise the application of funds to projects.

The Solution
Save the Children’s overseas accounting applications are based on deploying Sun Accounts in the field, PS Financials ledgers at head office, and employing Entity developed budget entry facilities (written in Visual Basic, MS Access and a third party OCX for the spreadsheet grid) to manage the budget compilation and submission process. Financial information in the field is submitted to and received from head office monthly, using another Entity developed routine to control such submission (written in Visual Basic, and MS Access). The budget modelling exercise was undertaken using MS Excel, plus Visual Basic supplementary routines to automate a number of budget planning scenarios and consolidation facilities.

Relevance of the case study to potential clients
The relevance of the Save the Children case study is that it demonstrates to potential clients that Entity has:

Proven commitment to a long-term partnership with a large 'Not for Profit' client.
Delivered successful project management in a complex business scenario covering design of new systems and interfaces to existing systems.
Demonstrated the ability to work effectively with a number of other suppliers to Save the Children.
Provided management of an ongoing operational service over a prolonged period.
Delivered a quality service and value for money.

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