Bea Fisher Organization
“As we developed more sophisticated service delivery methods, we needed to better understand the true cost of our operations,” explains George Zaychkowsky, CEO of Bea Fisher. “SAP Business one provides the power and visibility that meet our needs. “
Dignity in Purpose
Based in Lloydminster, in the province of Alberta, Canada, the Bea Fisher organization is dedicated to providing individual-driven services to persons with developmental, physical, and sensory disabilities. By providing job opportunities, housing, and transportation, the Bea Fisher organization helps clients participate more fully in society.
The organization includes the Bea Fisher Foundation, which raises funds and awareness, and the Bea Fisher centre, which provides programs and services, including jobs and housing. To help raise funds for the center and provide employment opportunities for those with disabilities, the organization created the non-profit Bea Fisher Enterprises, a recycling operation. Most recently, the group formed Fisher Building Systems, a for-profit wood and metals manufacturing company that hires disabled persons to build sheds and other structures for field services companies.
Way to grow
To support its operations, Bea Fisher used old DOS-based software pro-gram that was sufficient to handle early finance, housing, and labour processes. “But as we began creating new companies, the old software couldn’t keep up,” says Zaychkowsky.
The legacy software lacked the processing power and functionality the organization needed to support its entrepreneurial vision. What’s more, decision makers struggled to obtain relevant, timely information from the system.
“We were doing many operations out-side of the software,” explains Brian Craig, director of finance and corporate services for Bea Fisher. “We would enter some data in spreadsheets and then re-enter it as a journal entry in the accounting package. The duplication of effort was inefficient and also in-creased the possibility of errors.”
Bea Fisher needed a solution that would provide integrated manufacturing, finance, and HR functionality. In the manufacturing operation, managers needed to be able to track production and inventory controls. The finance team wanted to replace manual record-keeping methods with automated pro-cesses that could enhance efficiency, improve data accuracy, streamline re-port generation, and enable enhanced decision support. HR managers wanted to be able to track labour hours and staff performance.
Most important, Bea Fisher wanted a solution that could keep pace with the organization as it evolved. “We are a growing company, and we see many opportunities to serve the disabled population,” says Zaychkowsky. “To successfully develop these new initiatives meant that we had to invest in new software.”
Rapid Deployment, Rich Functionality
The organization investigated several software solutions designed to meet the needs of small and midsize businesses. When VistaVu Solutions llc, an SAP channel partner, presented SAP Business one, the Bea Fisher team stopped searching.
The software’s robust functionality was exactly what the organization needed to support its finance, manufacturing, and hr processes. intuitive report gen-eration features were ideal to enhance
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