True Definitions as they relate to financial management solutions for nonprofits, NGOs and the public sector.

We have all heard the buzz words, the cloud, SaaS, online, hosted, on-premise and more, but what do they really mean and which is right for my organization?  Join Serenic Software and learn the true definitions of these technology platforms and discover which solution is right for your organization.  Our team of experts will explore and demonstrate ways to increase the positive impact technology has on your day-today activities by maximizing the value you get from your financial and operational management software.

Join us for this comprehensive and dynamic presentation and find new ways to support and empower you mission!  Learn the true definitions of these technology platforms and key factors to consider before purchasing, including:

• Initial and ongoing costs
• IT resources
• Flexibility of access and customization
• Implementation
• Security

This event will include a demonstration of Serenic Software’s award-winning Navigator financial management system, available through SaaS, hosted and on-premise.  Serenic Corporation is a global provider of financial and business management software products that satisfy the unique and sophisticated functionality requirements of nonprofits, NGOs and the public sector.

Date:  Thursday, August 25, 2011

Time:  11:30 – 1:30

Location:  The Capital Grille
                  Biltmore Fashion Park
                  2502 East Camelback Road
Phoenix, AZ 85016

Lunch from the menu is included at this FREE seminar!  There will also be a drawing for an XBOX!

Register here: http://www.serenic.com/events/seminars/phoenix-aug25.aspx

We’re back in Denver after a great time at the InterAction Forum in Washington DC. Many of the nonprofit and NGO conferences we attend are in the DC area and it is always nice to travel to a familiar place and see familiar faces from past conferences. InterAction is a coalition of members seeking to make policy decisions on development relief for humanitarian issues and disasters worldwide.

We were fortunate to get some quality time with a number of existing accounting software clients and prospective clients during the networking and happy hour on Wednesday, while admiring the Artisan Trade Fair on Thursday, and during breakfast on Friday. The overriding topic of conversation at the conference seemed to focus on identifying and replacing outmoded and often ineffectual processes within nonprofit organizations. Many members expressed the challenges and frustration they face managing the lifecycle of their projects and programs and the lack of data needed to conduct proper impact evaluation and program assessments. The question kept coming up, “How can our organization become more accountable and transparent to increase awareness amongst all of our staff?”

One moment that stood out to us was with an organization that produces ready-to-use foods for children that suffer from malnutrition across the globe. We were given a sample packet of the food that they use for infants with chronic malnutrition. It was similar to peanut butter with plenty of protein and in a form that would not spoil. To think, this organization creates nutrition solutions that could save the lives of millions of children.

It was impossible for us to speak to every member organization at the event, but they all have stories like this one and seem to be passionate and dedicated fully to the success of their missions.

A new case study describing international media ministry Trans World Radio’s (TWR) upgrade to Serenic Navigator 2009. TWR provides programming and other spiritual content in more than 200 languages and dialects across 160 countries. After benefitting from Serenic Navigator’s productivity and multi-currency capabilities since 2003, TWR wanted to upgrade to Navigator 2009 across its 30-person finance department – with accounting staff in nine different countries and data transferred between servers in five geographic locations.

TWR was one of the first Serenic clients to upgrade to Navigator 2009. It had been four years since the organization’s last upgrade, so its users looked forward to new ease-of-use features and functionality built into the system’s user interface, resulting in a greatly enhanced user experience. Other benefits included:

• The new architecture enables a smaller database that helps save TWR valuable time and data storage space.
• The improved user experience provides a familiar user interface that is easy to use, minimizes training time, helps prioritize tasks and makes quick business decisions possible.

Thank you to TWR CFO Steve Hippe and Cheryl Reynolds, TWR finance support specialist, for sharing their story. “The general consensus among our users is that Navigator 2009 saves time on a daily basis,” according to Reynolds. “Overall, what used to take three to four steps, can now be accomplished in one or two steps.”

Serenic’s team is looking forward to growing with TWR in its continued success. View the entire case study.

Jim Ingram, CEO/Finance Director at Medair, shares how Serenic Navigator helps them live their core values of accountability and integrity. Based in Switzerland, Medair has complex fund accounting needs with over 120 grants and funds. As an international NGO, they need to be able to segregate grant money by fund and do multi-currency. Serenic Navigator has provided more timely and accurate reporting on these grants to their funders, and better cash management.

“Finance is about timing and accuracy… you need the right software to do that.” – Jim Ingram.

Access the video here: http://www.youtube.com/user/SerenicSoftware#p/a/u/0/qw0SQBKyLrc

View the latest video in which Julie Wyman, CIO at the International Union for Conservation of Nature(IUCN), discusses the organization’s need to upgrade its information technology infrastructure and the ways in which Serenic Software is helping IUCN achieve this goal and support their mission.

According to the Swiss government, IUCN is a Quasi-governmental International Organization (QGIO) located in Switzerland.  IUCN’s work is supported by more than 1,000 professional staff in 60 offices and hundreds of partners in public and private sectors, and NGOs around the world.  They, like many other international NGOs, face unique challenges.  Julie talks about how Serenic’s nonprofit financial management software has helped empower their mission.   Their main points were described in a previous blog post and their goals are to increase efficiencies through bringing organizational wide data together into one system – providing mission critical data to staff worldwide allowing solid and supported decisions.

They practice what they preach and have the world’s most environmentally friendly building. Thank you, Julie. We’re looking forward to a successful implementation and continuing to help empower your mission across the world.

To view the video, please visit here.

In our latest video, Rebecca Newton, Director of Operations at RSF Social Finance, talks about Serenic’s nonprofit financial management software which is providing them real-time reporting and transparency.

RSF Social Finance, based in San Francisco, offers investing, lending and giving services that generate positive social and environmental impact while fostering community and collaboration among participants. Since 1984, RSF has made over $200 million in loans and over $90 million in grants to nonprofit and for-profit social enterprises.

With Serenic Navigator, they are able to easily communicate to their board details on all the activities happening in their three program areas: food and agriculture, ecological stewardship, and education and the arts. The custom role centers, which focus on each job function, allow them to streamline their weekly grants processing and workflows for their accounting staff and philanthropic service team.

Serenic Navigator is built on the Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2009 platform, and enables quick adoption for increased productivity throughout nonprofit organizations.

See how Serenic Navigator, nonprofit accounting software, has helped RSF meet the specific challenges nonprofits and NGOs face on a daily basis:

http://www.serenic.com/media/videos/Serenic-Testimonial-RSF.mp4

We recently hosted an international NGO accounting seminar in South Africa, along with Send IT South, SangoNet and Zap BI. The event received rave reviews! A specific call out to Irene and Lenie at Send IT South for making the event such a success. According to one attendee, “What an eye opener! Brilliant! Thoroughly enjoyed the Serenic presentation which is surely the only way, to my mind, NGO’s cannot do without. We are very interested in this product because it’s totally unique and what we have been looking for some time now.”

Attendees were able to find out why Serenic Navigator, certified for Microsoft Dynamics NAV, is the leading financial management solution for NGOs and nonprofit organizations. They also were able to learn about the integrated business intelligence solution developed by Zap BI, specifically for Serenic Navigator. Zap’s solution helps automate reporting workflows, provides unlimited multi-dimensional and cross ledger analysis, and displays data with dashboards and scorecards.

Thanks to all who made this event such a success. We look forward to working with more NGOs in the Western Cape and helping empower their missions!

International NGO Accounting Seminar in South Africa

There always seems to be at least one nonprofit or NGO conference we attend every summer in Washington D.C.  This year we will be participating in three, two of which we recently attended back to back.  I always look forward to trips to Washington.  Even when working long hours exhibiting, I always leave a renewed feeling of pride and patriotism for our great country.

The most recent trip took me and Ryan Goodine, Regional Sales Manager, to the InsideNGO Annual Conference and the AICPA – National Not-for-Profit Industry Conference.  We got off to a running start with the InsideNGO conference starting Monday morning.  Here at Serenic we are proud to represent so many of the InsideNGO members and very much appreciate their support in spreading the news of how Serenic is meeting their accounting and operational management needs.  It truly felt that Serenic was a buzz word at the conference this year.  A special thanks to the staff at InsideNGO for creating a fantastic exhibit area with quality time to speak with both prospects and customers.

As Ryan wrapped up the InsideNGO exhibit I hoofed it over to Georgetown to get setup for the opening reception of the AICPA conference.  This was our second year back to this event and we are already looking forward to next year!  This show is great in the diversity of nonprofits including small to large, human services to arts and culture, and many consultants.  You can learn a lot from listening to all the different types of organizations and the best part was having solutions for all with our online, hosted and on-premise software offerings.  Once again we had great conversations with prospect and customers and thanks to all for stopping by.  It was especially pleasing to finally get to meet our customer Jennifer Bonenfant from the University of Virginia Alumni Association.  Jennifer has been a strong advocate for Serenic and I frequently use quotes from our UVAA case study.  I look forward to typing a quote from her and being able to see her delightful smile!

With nonprofit, NGO and public sector clients and prospects scattered across the globe, the best part of these shows is the chance to put a face with name.  In this world of email and phone communications, it’s always great to have the correct image of a smiling face when correspondence continues after the show.  As well, the folks back in our office enjoy hearing the stories about those we met.   When you see Serenic listed as an exhibitor at any conference, please take a moment to stop by and say “Hi.”  We love the opportunity to get to know you a bit better, hear your successes, pains and best practices.  You’ll be greeted with smiling faces and we have some of the best give-a-ways!

Serenic has teamed up with Zap Technology to create an integrated nonprofit business intelligence solution as part of Serenic Navigator. Using the powerful capabilities of Zap Business Intelligence for Microsoft Dynamics NAV, Serenic’s product management team is working with a number of early adopter customers to identify metrics that will help our customers boost productivity and effectiveness.

Business Intelligence software helps your organization automate management reporting, alerts, report scheduling, and what-if analysis. ZAP further points out that “all users are empowered to create their own analytics, and power users appreciate the simplicity and flexibility of creating complex analytics and automating workflows.”

Zap Business Intelligence for Microsoft Dynamics NAV allows you to:

• Automate reporting workflows and save time and money spent on manual reporting.
• Analyze your business from any angle, including unlimited multi-dimensional analysis and cross ledger analysis.
• Make performance information pervasive with dashboards, scorecards, and key performance indicators.
• Perform analyses that make a difference to the bottom line, such as cash flow analysis and inventory analysis.

So why use Serenic’s BI solution?

We know the nonprofit industry, so we’re working hard to bring you a tailored, industry-specific BI solution that minimizes the time, cost and effort you’ll need to implement BI. Our ultimate goal is to enhance Zap’s existing BI solution to include a nonprofit financial management cube and a set of pre-packaged analytics specific to the nonprofit sector, including reports, dashboards, KPIs, and scorecards.

In the meantime, Zap’s patent-pending and award-winning technology provides several innovations that cover the full spectrum of BI needs – everything from building a cube, to providing pre-packaged analytics, to easy creation and use of analytics so your business users can take full advantage. There are many BI solutions on the market, but many are technically complex, only provide partial capability, and most can’t easily cater to the unique and powerful features of an embedded NAV solution such as Navigator. We’re confident that the combination of Serenic and Zap will meet your BI needs in the easiest and most effective way possible.

Stay tuned to new information posted on the Serenic website and, if you have questions in the meantime, contact Serenic Client Account Manager Sue Kim at skim@serenic.com or call 720-362-5114.