For over 29 years, not-for-profit organisation Living My Way has been supporting people with disabilities to live self-directed lives. Instead of matching support workers with individuals, it empowers members to find and employ support workers who meet their requirements, so they can lead the lives they want (hence the name!).
It’s a point of difference that continues to help a lot of people in the disability community, and with the right systems in place, including MYOB Advanced Business and Advanced Payroll, the organisation can now operate at maximum efficiency.
Key learnings from a not-for-profit organisation
ERP system integrated with multiple data sources
Dashboards provide real-time reporting and insights for all business teams
Automated processes lead to operational efficiency and business growth
Supporting members to live self-directed lives
Living My Way supports individuals with all disabilities from the age of six in NSW, ACT and QLD. In addition to support workers, it also offers plan management, support coordination and occupational therapy services.
The organisation has approximately 370 members, and 90 of those members employ their own staff, totalling 300 support workers across the country.
Too much pressure on finance system
What makes the organisation unique also comes with several operational challenges, explains Living My Way’s chief operating officer, John Fawcett.
And when the National Disability Insurance Agency (NDIA) was rolled out in 2015, the organisation was faced with additional complexities that put even more pressure on its systems.
“It’s a fantastic scheme that supports people with disabilities to be able to contribute to society, but it’s also an insurance scheme – so essentially cutting down costs and ensuring there are efficiencies in place.
“For us, it was all around being able to operate effectively and efficiently under the NDIA, so that we could continue to support our Members in the best possible way” John says.
To make informed strategic decisions in real-time, the old system needed an upgrade.
"Before MYOB Advanced Business, we weren’t able to grow certain parts of our business – Now, improved efficiencies have allowed those resources to be deployed elsewhere, and we’re able to grow other parts of the organisation."
- John Fawcett, Chief Operating Officer, Living My Way
Slow manual processing puts reporting on back foot
Most organisations are faced with operational challenges and in Living My Way’s case, the list was long. It quickly became apparent that it was time to upgrade the old finance system — MYOB AccountRight.
With multiple funding sources, the organisation needs to be able to pull, collate and report on data by member or revenue stream. John and his team had been doing this time-consuming process manually. By the time they’d finished, the data and insights were no longer relevant, making it hard for management to do any strategic planning.
“We couldn’t report on the profitability per service offering – it was very difficult and involved a lot of individual processing,” John adds.
MYOB Advanced Business: Dynamic ERP that plays well with other systems
John and his team identified the main requirements and went to market to find a solution. There was one system that stood out from the crowd.
“MYOB Advanced Business ticked off all the individual requirements, but it also had the flexibility to move and grow,” John says.
Being a not-for-profit, the organisation needed a cost-effective solution. It was also imperative that any new system could integrate seamlessly with the rest of the organisation.
“It's where a few of the other providers fell over. They just couldn't work out a way to get the data from different sources into the system, so we could pull reports and insights in a timely manner. MYOB Advanced Business could do that.”
Seamless data mapping provides clear view of profitability
When you’re dealing with multiple data sets across five different systems, finding one person’s information can be challenging.
With MYOB Advanced Business and cleverly configured staging tables, the finance team finally has a way to see through all the complexity.
“It’s been customised so that all our data gets imported and goes through staging tables to ensure that we’ve captured the data we need. We can then trigger the next steps in the process. It’s all handled in the system,” John explains.
One subaccount structure allows the team to identify financial information for individual members, and a second subaccount segment provides visibility of profitability per revenue stream.
They’re now also able to manage their members’ NDIS plan budgets, which have been integrated with their CRM, Salesforce.
"It was really important that MYOB Advanced Business could do all the heavy lifting for us – and it does."
Agile leadership backed by real-time reporting
For the very first time, every team across the organisation has dashboard reporting, giving them access to data-driven insights in real-time.
“Honestly, we were driving blind previously. People would have opinions about how we were doing certain things, but unless you have the data to back it up, it’s really difficult to justify it,” John explains.
It’s been a game-changer for the leadership team, which now has what it needs to make those strategic decisions that'll ultimately help the organisation better support the disabled community.
“The level of reporting and insights, it's just above and beyond what we've ever had in the past. It puts us in a position where we’re able to plan, execute and see the results straight away.”
Bulk processing reduces manual data entry by 1.5 FTE
Before MYOB Advanced Business, every single one of the organisation’s invoices was processed manually.
“The amount of time it took up was ridiculous,” John says.
Within minutes of the system being upgraded, the finance team “gained the efficiencies of 1.5 FTE” with bulk processing functionality. That resource was then able to be re-allocated to add more value in other parts of the organisation.
"Our month-end reporting used to take us three to three-and-a-half weeks. Now it’s done in three days. That’s the kind of efficiency you really want from a system."
Payroll now managed internally
The cherry on top was implementing MYOB Advanced Payroll.
The organisation had been outsourcing its payroll, but now has the resources and system capabilities to manage it in-house. MYOB Advanced Payroll has been customised to import data from the organisation’s timesheet software Deputy, so it can process payroll and claims to NDIS automatically, without needing manual input from users. That comes with cost savings too.
"MYOB Advanced Business has enabled us to grow our business to the point where we really need to be so that we can support more members. At the end of the day, that’s the most important thing."
Living My Way: empowering the disabled community
29 years and counting: Living My Way supports people with disabilities to live self-directed lives.
It is a not-for-profit organisation, funded through a variety of government initiatives and insurance agencies (sometimes self-funded too) in NSW, ACT and QLD.
The organisation has approximately 370 members, and 90 of those members employ their own staff, totalling 300 support workers across the country.
Improvements: upgrading to MYOB Advanced Business
ERP system integrated with multiple data sources
Subaccounts provide visibility of profitability by revenue stream
Dashboard provides real-time reporting and insights for all business teams
High-level, sophisticated reports help leadership make informed decisions
Bulk processing eliminates 1.5 FTE of manual work
Timesheet data integrated enables payroll to be managed internally
Automated processes lead to operational efficiency and business growth
Flexibility: room to grow and add more modules as needed
