With a growing number of members and an increase in paperwork, Benchmarc Group was contacted by the Scouting Association, who were looking at ways to bring their financial systems and management into the 21st Century.

At the time of review, there were multiple financial systems in place, across a number of platforms with no continuity resulting in a strenuous process to enter data with three staff hired to work on different sections of this area. On top of this, they were unable to get meaningful reporting to allow them to make financial decisions based on real time information.

Benchmarc worked on an implementation strategy, spending a signicant amount of time consulting with all stakeholders and worked to implement a system which not only met the needs of a large and diverse number of groups, but was simplistic and allowed for the Scouts to work on opportunities to grow their footprint within the community and spend less time bogged down in paperwork.

Through the successful implementation of Xero in the head office, time spent on data entry reduced by 50% and accuracy signicantly improved through the connection of the API between Xero and the Scouts invoicing system, which meant that the reconciliation of invoicing became automated.

It may seem daunting at first to change business processes that have been running the same way for many years, but with the right team and support system it can be done seamlessly and can be fully customised; that way the business can reap the benefits that are most important to them.