The Company

Founded in 2004, Correlation Risk Partners (CRP) is a private equity investment firm based in London who had been an ACUITY24 client for over 10 years using Sage 300.

As reporting became more complex, they wanted to reduce reliance on Excel spreadsheets, manual data configuration and data manipulation to produce reports. Their recharging process was another challenge, due to costs being recharged to partner companies monthly and manual invoice creation.

Compliance with Making Tax Digital and the automation of VAT submissions also called for digitalisation of their financial management processes. The final catalyst was support for Sage 300 due to be withdrawn in the near future.

The Objectives

• Produce reports quickly in-house
• Manage inter-company transactions
• MTD compliance
• Centralise all systems
• Remote access and real-time visibility
• Automate recharging processes and invoicing
• Eliminate manual workarounds
• Flexibility to add new entities as and when required

The search

Acuity proactively consulted with the team at CRP to discuss their Sage options in light of the potential discontinuation to Sage 300; whilst they also reviewed other solutions such as Xero and QuickBooks that were in use by their partners. However, through their research, they found that these solutions did not provide the functionality and capacity that was required.

Initially, we discussed Sage 200 and Sage X3 as options but quickly discounted them both; Sage 200 lacked the functionality required, and Sage X3 was deemed too big and costly for their needs.

At the time of CRP’s discussions with Acuity, Sage Intacct had not yet been launched in the UK. However, Intacct (which had recently been acquired by Sage and rebranded as Sage Intacct) was widely used in the United States and has been recognised as a leading financial management solution for many years.

Acuity were one of the first UK Sage Partners to add Sage Intacct to their portfolio and presented it to CRP at an Acuity-hosted Partner Day in London. From this introduction Debbie and Catherine felt that Sage Intacct would be the best solution for their migration project, would solve their recharging issues and was also a true cloud solution and therefore paperless.

Gathering more information and further support from Acuity, CRP took the decision to invest in Sage Intacct and became the first UK business to implement the solution.

The implementation process for Correlation was an all-at-once approach, with all their data moved in one go. Due to this being the first UK implementation, it was a very hands-on process for all involved.

The implementation

Debbie and Catherine felt that the implementation process and working with Acuity was straightforward with “no real challenges”.

“Support from Acuity was first class. Our Account Manager was great, particularly, and was always on hand to help and explain. [He gave us] clear quotes and information. That was key for us. Even though we were able to go and choose the system, we still had to get sign off on the cost. So, he was able to tell us, it’s going to cost you more than [Sage 300] cost you, but here’s what you’re going to get for that.”

CRP’s Acuity Account Manager provided them with a presentation outlining the one off and recurring costs for implementing Sage Intacct, which they were then able to share with their directors for approval.

Once the project was underway, the Acuity team provided training sessions with CRP’s Finance team and was incredibly supportive in helping to resolve any challenges and issues that arose later in the process. Acuity quickly put together and generated reports that were able to satisfy the business’ needs, as well as provide comprehensive training to enable the team to fulfil any ongoing and longer-term reporting requirements.

As this was the first UK implementation, CRP also benefitted from one-to-one support and video calls directly with Sage Intacct.

For Acuity, the main focus of the project was “managing teething problems”. CRP’s Account Manager said:

“In terms of the implementation, we were quite open and honest [with CRP], and [they] were with us in that they were the first in the UK to implement Sage Intacct. Ultimately, we knew there were going to be some challenges and some issues. And so, I think from our side it was more about how we managed those with [CRP] and ensured they were kept up to speed throughout”.

The Benefits

The implementation of Sage Intacct within the Correlation Risk Partners business has provided several benefits.

Crucially, it has replaced Sage 300 which would have been risky for the businesses to keep in place once the Sage support was withdrawn.

For CRP, everything now goes through Sage Intacct. When using Sage 300, their month end accounts took two weeks to process. Since implementing Sage Intacct, they now process invoices daily, journals can be input and edited throughout the month, and month-end can be done in days – more than a 50% saving in time and the associated resource.

As a result of these improvements, the team is now more efficient and there is significant scope for growth.

Key benefits for CRP include Intacct enabling them to:

• Overcome limitations and restrictions they faced in Sage 300.
• Save hours of manual labour with reduced data entry and manual errors.
• Reduce the amount of time to consolidate data into reports by 50%,
• Identify complications in their processes then review and optimise them for evolution.