In operation since 1969, the Health Museum is a nonprofit based in Houston, Texas. The organization built its own Museum of Health and Medical Science in 1996 and has educated more than 2.5 million visitors. Following several years of significant growth, the Health Museum’s on-premises financial and accounting system became outdated and unstable. Moving to Sage Intacct delivered the efficiency, visibility and control the organization needed to continue growing and delivering on its mission.
The Health Museum's mission is to foster wonder and curiosity about health, medical science and the human body. Located in the heart of Houston, the popular interactive learning center serves thousands of families and school children annually through onsite and offsite programs focusing on life sciences and other science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields. “The museum touches people’s lives and makes them think about how to live better in this world,” says Imran Josephi, chief finance and technology officer for the Health Museum.
Under the leadership of a new chief executive officer (CEO), the Health Museum has grown significantly in the past several years. “I was hired to transform the finance and accounting function,” says Josephi. “It was clear that the previous systems, controls and processes were not designed support a growing, successful nonprofit like ours.”
What Josephi discovered was that the old accounting system was unstable and prone to crashing, as well as outdated, difficult to use and not accessible remotely. An even more pressing problem was the lack of visibility into the organization’s financial data.
“Department managers didn’t know that they were over budget until our financial reporting was completed at the end of the period,” says Josephi. “There were little to no financial monitoring capabilities and processes in place, which meant that the CEO and the department heads had no insight into financial performance on a day-to-day basis.”
It was clear to Josephi that the Health Museum needed a new accounting solution that could:
Based on these criteria, Josephi narrowed his choices to a modern, cloudbased solution. After reviewing several alternatives, he chose Sage Intacct, a cloud financial management solution recommended by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA).
He also selected Armanino to deploy the new solution for the museum. Armanino, one of the 25 largest independent accounting and consulting firms in the U.S., is Sage Intacct’s largest certified value-added reseller (VAR) partner for software, integration consulting and software consulting.
After setting an aggressive goal for implementation, Josephi worked with the Armanino team to plan and design how the software would be deployed for the Health Museum. “Armanino took the time to understand our needs and how to mesh our requirements with how Sage Intacct works,” he says. “The result was a very smooth and on-time implementation.” Working together, Josephi and the Armanino team achieved all of his goals for the deployment.
Armanino took the time to understand our needs and how to mesh our requirements with how Sage Intacct works.
With its new financial management solution, the Health Museum is seeing all the benefits it expected and more—from greater efficiency and time savings to better control and visibility into its financials. “Since implementing Sage Intacct, our financials have been amazing,” says Josephi. “We’re under budget for the first time because we can now spot a problem and take action immediately.”
The new system saves the organization many hours of effort each month. “It now takes me less than an hour to enter 50 invoices, instead of the six or seven hours it would take before,” he says. “Plus, as bills are approved by our CEO, they automatically go to the Sage Intacct Check Delivery Service module, and I don’t have to touch them again. No more envelope stuffing.”
He also cites the time savings for the payroll function, which went from a two-day effort down to a matter of minutes, as well as eliminating the time required to manage on-premises financial software and the hardware it runs on. “With Sage Intacct I can do everything far more quickly and efficiently than before, because it’s all automated and in the cloud,” says Josephi.
The museum also reduced the complexity of managing finance and accounting by moving to Sage Intacct. “Our chart of accounts went from 1,500 down to 100, making it much easier to manage from an accounting perspective,” says Josephi. As the museum’s CFO, he also has greater peace of mind with the new cloud-based solution. “With Sage Intacct, our data is backed up automatically and accessible from anywhere,” he says. “I don’t have to worry about the server crashing or losing our data.”
In Josephi’s opinion, the biggest benefit of the new financial management system is the ability for managers to monitor their department’s activity and budget on a day-to-day basis. “Our department managers can see their entire budget and drill down into certain activities to identify any issues,” says Josephi. “Now they can actively manage their budget and make better planning decisions.”
Since implementing Sage Intacct, our financials have been amazing. We’re under budget for the first time because we can now spot a problem and take action immediately.
Josephi believes that Sage Intacct is especially well-designed for the needs of nonprofits, and that organizations that don’t make the move to the cloud are getting left behind. “I would tell any nonprofit to move to a cloud-based financial system like Sage Intacct as quickly as possible,” he says. He also recommends working with Armanino. “I have a good relationship with the Armanino team, and the consultants I work with have always gone out of their way to help me be successful,” he says.
As the Health Museum continues on its healthy growth trajectory, Josephi envisions supporting that growth by adding more modules from Sage Intacct to the core system to support new and expanded functions. “We now have a very powerful platform for our financial and accounting system,” he says. “We have transformed accounting and reduced our costs at the same time.” And with his finger on the pulse of the nonprofit, Josephi foresees a healthy outcome for the Health Museum for a long time to come.
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