Sage Intacct Unlocks HCM Software Firm’s Efficiency and Agility

Outdated System Constricts Productivity

In a period of widespread workforce disruption, human capital management (HCM) software leader Rival started its own major transformation after a private equity firm acquired the company in 2021 and relaunched the brand. One top priority for Rival (formerly known as SilkRoad Technology) was elevating its outdated technology stack to boost productivity and revenue and better serve clients.

Brendan Williams, Director of Finance at Rival, knew that replacing the Chicago-based SaaS company’s outdated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system would unlock valuable productivity gains and help the business become more agile. Their legacy, on-premises Microsoft GP system was difficult to maintain and integrate with their customer relationship management (CRM) solution and required extensive manual processes, which hampered customer insights.

Williams describes the company’s legacy ERP as so old and outdated that “it couldn’t be connected to the internet.” The finance team had persevered with GP because it was license free. But ultimately, the inflexibility and sluggishness of their legacy software, along with a lack of CRM integration, pushed Rival to seek a modern system that could support the company’s growth.

Taking the Leap to a Flexible ERP

Williams’ priorities included working faster through automation, reducing manual processes and errors, improving forecasts and closing more quickly at month’s end. Rival assessed various options and chose Sage Intacct, a cloudbased solution tailored to meet the SaaS industry’s billing, accounting and reporting needs.

Sage Intacct tracks industry-specific measurements such as churn, customer acquisition cost and customer annual recurring revenue, while minimizing the complexity, time and frustration associated with revenue recognition. A contracts module would provide Williams’ team visibility into waterfall forecasting for their revenue recognition and billing schedules.

The finance team’s immediate focus was on getting up to speed to better serve clients. With Sage Intacct, they could implement an automated global consolidation process, automate intercompany transactions and tap the solution’s multi-tax capabilities to streamline tax requirements.

Legacy Data Fuels Forecasting Visibility

The Rival team knew that the transition from their legacy software package to Sage Intacct would require outside expertise. Williams was familiar with Armanino’s reputation as a premier Sage Intacct partner. Armanino brought a decade of deep expertise in delivering personalized ERP assessments and roadmaps, implementations, data migration, software training and customizations.

Williams, who manages order-to-cash, wanted the implementation to begin with several years worth of historical revenue data — a challenging task. This information was not being tracked to provide visibility for forecasts, because doing so in Excel was so error prone and manual.

Getting the data in Sage Intacct would give the finance team greater visibility to their contracts and enable them to provide analysis and value added reporting to management.

The Armanino consultants worked with the Rival team to make it happen. “Armanino did a great job of getting us involved in the front end and meeting the high expectations we set at the beginning of the implementation,” says Williams.

Ongoing Training Bolsters Implementation Success

Software training is often the most overlooked aspect of a successful ERP implementation. Meeting “go-live” dates becomes the organizational priority in the rush to exploit the new application’s compelling features, which impedes user adoption and makes it hard to realize the solution’s value.

Not for Rival. The finance team received Sage Intacct training before, during and after the implementation. They also prized on-the-fly sessions where Armanino experts walked through how to solve challenges or optimize various features.

“With some systems, you can’t get 100% of training upfront just because you don’t know what to look for,” Williams says. “The Armanino team did a great job of getting us up and running.”

‘Hyperflexible’ Solution Delivers Efficiency and Agility

Sage Intacct’s transformative impact on the finance team soon became clear. “Once we went live in the new system, that third of their day spent on manual order entry literally disappeared,” says Williams. “The accuracy of our invoicing became even stronger because it’s all tied directly to our CRM data.”

Microsoft GP lacked multi-currency capabilities, requiring staff to use complicated workarounds such as entering transactions in the entity’s base currency and manually recording realized/unrealized currency gains. Pulling together recurring revenue by product line was equally complicated.

“Our legacy software was built for a much simpler organization, and we grew out of it. Sage Intacct is hyperflexible,” says Williams. “There’s tremendous value. Order entry and invoicing is now completed in two to three hours each week, where it used to take two or three days. Consolidated financial statements for our multi-entity organization is a button click, whereas we historically had to use a third-party reporting tool for consolidations.“

And the month-end close now takes six to seven business days inclusive of financial reviews, where it used to take almost twice as long. With Sage Intacct in place and ongoing support from Armanino’s Application Managed Services, Rival can accelerate productivity without the burdens of managing inflexible processes and maintaining outdated on-premise applications. Williams’ team now has a more comprehensive view of their organization and customers; they’re working faster through automation, reducing manual processes and errors, and driving smarter, faster data-backed decisions.

The ultimate outcome: Rival can keep up with the rapid pace of the tech industry and thrive.

Reduction in time spent invoicing clients

BEFORE Sage Intacct
2-3 DAYS

AFTER Sage Intacct
2-3 HRS

Month-end close now takes six to seven business days, where it used to take almost twice as long.