WebAssign is a leading provider of online learning solutions for higher and secondary education. Incubated at North Carolina State University, it has grown rapidly over the last few years. Major academic publishers use WebAssign’s online homeworking and grading tools for over 600 math and science textbooks.
WebAssign turned to Massey Consulting, now Dean Dorton, to replace QuickBooks and Excel with a solution that would streamline their reporting processes and give the finance team more visibility into business data.
THE CHALLENGE
As its business became more complex, WebAssign struggled to capture and monitor data using QuickBooks and never-ending spreadsheets inside of Excel. With software limitations, WebAssign lacked visibility into individual engineering projects so it could make better forecasts about the resources needed to add new product features within their business.
WebAssign initially tried to solve this challenge by moving to Microsoft Dynamics Great Plains (GP), but faced significant internal resistance due to the system’s clunky timesheet interface, which created barriers for employees.
In addition to manual reporting processes, the company resorted to a paper-based timesheet approval process, which created a cumbersome paper trail for human resources and no easy way to track if everyone on the 70-person team was turning in timesheets.
The Solution
Dean Dorton was able to help WebAssign choose Sage Intacct as their ERP system and successfully moved over ten years of historical financial data from both Microsoft Dynamics GP and QuickBooks into Sage Intacct. Now, all employees – from the president on down – have user and role-defined web access to Sage Intacct.
With Sage Intacct’s Project Accounting feature, the company can easily and accurately capture time and expenses and have real-time visibility into all business project details. The finance team has streamlined and automated several other processes using Sage Intacct, from project accounting to accounts receivables and accounts payables.
Results with Sage Intacct
With full visibility around employees’ time and expenses, WebAssign now benefits from deeper insight into the real-time status and margins of all active and completed projects across the organization. These accurate project report cards help the content services team monitor their revenue stream. Because of Sage Intacct’s multi-dimensional architecture, the company can slice and dice costs and revenues by its most important academic disciplines. This kind of insight represents a key factor in the health and growth of the business.
“From smooth, painless financial closes each month, to quick AP entries, to easy-to-use accounts receivables features, every single process works in Sage Intacct.”
— BARBARA RAESS, FORMER FINANCIAL PLANNING ANALYST, WEBASSIGN
With the time that Sage Intacct’s automation capabilities have freed from manual bookkeeping tasks, WebAssign’s finance team has been able to devote more energy to collaborating with operational managers. At least two to three times each year, they’re able to sit down with individual managers across the company and talk about each group’s expenses and budgets.
Using Sage Intacct’s customizable dashboards, the team can get a more accurate reading of where the company is likely going to be by the end of the year, and re-forecast if needed.