International charity rolls-out finance system from m-hance across 23 developing countries
Worldwide roll-out completed in just five months, on time and to budget
19 April 2013 – Business software solutions provider m-hance has completed a worldwide system roll-out for leading international humanitarian charity, Concern Worldwide. This major project has seen m-hance successfully implement its financial management system at 23 of the charity’s sites situated in developing countries throughout Africa. The project, which was delivered on time and to budget, has been completed in just five months.
Concern Worldwide sought a fully supported, scalable and highly functional financial management system which was capable of meeting its needs as a charity on an international scale. The charity also required a flexible system that would enable it to smoothly transition to a hosted managed service model as part of its future vision.
Aoife Gleeson, Finance Director at Concern Worldwide, explains, “m-hance’s system is a market leading financial management solution. It will provide us with advanced reporting capabilities, improved financial control and most importantly, it can work with multiple currencies and locations. We can also access the solution as a hosted managed service via the cloud whenever the charity is ready to move.”
To ensure that the project was delivered within tight timescales, m-hance undertook as much preparation work as possible at Concern Worldwide’s offices in Dublin. This allowed the charity to keep each overseas country implementation to a five to seven day timescale as opposed to taking up to three weeks. The upgrades took place in 23 developing nations including Somalia, Ethiopia, Uganda, Bangladesh, North Korea, Afghanistan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Haiti, Malawi, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Burundi.
Bernard Gaughan, Head of Information Systems at Concern Worldwide, comments, “We’ve had a great experience working with m-hance who gave us access to a committed and knowledgeable technical resource throughout the entirety of the project. In unison both m-hance’s and Concern’s IT and finance teams in Dublin have successfully combined excellent project management skills in several challenging environments to meet the demands of Concern’s accountants, on time and to an exceptionally high standard.”
The international roll-out provided m-hance with the opportunity to provide support to the local teams as well as train Concern’s accountants. As a result, local users are now able to utilise all of the functionality from the new system. This, in turn, has assisted in reducing the number of queries the central finance team receives. The teams were also able to significantly reduce costs and the carbon footprint of the project by remotely managing the preparation efforts and some of the upgrades in more harder to reach regions.
Aoife Gleeson adds, “This was a huge project and its successful completion is due to the hard work and support of everyone involved. The strength of this relationship will make any future projects between Concern and m-hance’s IT teams easier to coordinate, with the full confidence of Concern’s finance department.”
About Concern Worldwide https://www.concern.net/
Concern Worldwide is an international humanitarian organisation dedicated to working with the world’s poorest people to transform their lives. It works in partnership with some of the world’s most vulnerable communities to tackle poverty and suffering. The charity uses its knowledge and experience to influence decisions made at a local, national and international level, to significantly reduce extreme poverty.
About m-hance www.m-hance.com
m-hance is a UK-based company providing innovative and functionally rich business software solutions to 2400 mid-market sized organisations including Innocent Drinks, RFU, Viridor, Millennium Hotels, Make-A-Wish, Hewden and Endsleigh Insurance. m-hance’s core solutions offering consists of financial management, CRM, enterprise social networking, SharePoint, HR & Payroll, managed services and software development in a variety of vertical markets including distribution, manufacturing, not-for-profit, professional services and infrastructure.
m-hance has been formed following the acquisitions of Calyx Software, Gyrosoft, Trinity Computer Services and elements of MentecPlus, Touchstone Group and Maxima Holdings plc. m-hance is currently supported by 230 staff from offices in Manchester, London, Loughborough, Dublin, Glasgow and the United States. m-hance also has offshore development capabilities in India.
In September 2012, m-hance was ranked in the Tech Track 100 league table as one of the fastest-growing private technology companies in Britain after achieving record sales growth of over 45%.
