The Practical Cloud: The Arboricultural Association

Putting Cloud-based NetSuite at the heart of its business has enabled tree charity, the Arboricultural Association, to release staff from admin overload and clean up its data. The charity, which promotes the care and knowledge of trees, was struggling to keep on top of its data.

With 17 separate Microsoft Access databases dotted around the UK, simply changing straightforward details such as a member’s address was a logistical nightmare and errors inevitably crept in. Says Nick Eden, director at the Arboricultural Association:

“All of the systems we had were creaking and groaning. Remote access was required by people working as not everyone was at head office. There were issues of security and back-up and we needed a central source of data. ”

The problems of data integrity and management was made even more complicated because Microsoft Access was not integrated with the charity’s Sage Financials package. Rather than try and find some way of linking all the data strands and systems together, the charity wanted to make a clean sweep.

So in 2007, the Association began to look for a solution that would pull together all these disparate data sources and provide a secure, remotely accessible, single source of data. NetSuite stood out from the crowd because it could house the charity’s financials, customer relationship management (CRM) and e-commerce together in one solution.

The fact that it was a Cloud rather than on-premise solution was not initially the main attraction, but without any permanent IT staff on its books, having services delivered over the Internet would bring immediate and on-going cost benefits. Savings made on hardware alone were the same as the first year’s NetSuite licence. Eden points out:

“We were looking for something that would work, not necessarily something in the Cloud. ”

It took three months in early 2008 to transfer the data and get the basic system working, but the charity is continuing to make improvements and adjustments the whole time. Alongside savings on IT infrastructure and management, pulling together data into one database means there’s less chance of errors entering the system and has freed up staff time.

A key benefit for the Association is that NetSuite enables remote, real-time access to information for all staff. With data automatically backed up by NetSuite, the Association is confident that its company information is safe. The charity has now developed a new website running on NetSuite, which will shortly have an e-commerce function, as well as forums for members. Eden says:

“ With NetSuite about 50% of the process will be done for us. so all our products, such as publications and new accounts will be set up with NetSuite. Addresses, invoice printing and posting - all that will be done behind the scenes and we won’t have to think about it. It will also easier for customers because they won’t have to download a paper copy from the web and fill it in and post it off. ”

Once the new website and e-commerce function has bedded down, the charity intends to start campaigning and email marketing.