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Unit4 Business World case study
Resort Municipality of Whistler First customer on Unit4 Business World Milestone 5 implemented under budget and ahead of schedule to eliminate inefficient workflows and refocus staff time on customer service.
OverviewThe one-of-a-kind Resort Municipality of Whistler, host
of the 2010 Winter Olympics and a beautiful tourism
destination, serves 10,000 residents and over 2 million
visitors every year, making its municipal services
delivery a complex feat. “You don’t see a lot of towns
with a population of 10,000 with such an advanced
technological infrastructure, with extensive fiber optics,”
says Heather Paul, Director of Corporate Services and
IT. Located 120 km north of Vancouver, Whistler has
long been a destination for ski enthusiasts and nature
lovers who appreciate the diversity of entertainment,
cultural and natural amenities available in the more than
24,000 hectares of the municipality and its many parks
and lakes. And with an average of over 9 meters of
snowfall each year, it’s not hard to see why Whistler is
such a winter sport destination. The Resort Municipality
of Whistler is a dedicated steward of the natural beauty
of the Coast Mountains, and strives for leadership
and engagement in making Whistler a successful,
prosperous community, as well as one of the world’s
premier mountain destination resorts.
In 2005, Whistler became a Unit4 Business World
customer because they were looking for the kind
of flexibility for scalable growth and easy, user-side
workflow modifications that Unit4 offers. Ten years
later when they found they needed a refresh, Ken
Roggeman, Director of Finance, says, “Our faith in Unit4
convinced us to be first in North America to implement
Milestone 5.”
The needWith the increasing expectations of a digitally
connected world, Whistler realized that relying on
manual processes, such as building program budgets
on several disparate Excel workbooks saved on staff
desktops, was slowing down productivity as a result of
repetitive, error-prone tasks.
Although the resort municipality was a decade-long
happy Unit4 customer, they had fallen 5 versions
behind on their upgrades. In order to avoid the digital
downgrade, which encroaches on even the most
forward-thinking organizations, Whistler underwent
a Unit4 Health Check to evaluate their back-office
systems utilization. As a modern, progressive
municipality already blazing a path as the first resort
municipality in North America, the city made the
decision to be proactive rather than reactive.
In business for people.
2 Unit4 case study
The solutionEmployee and community expectations are always
rising even as local governments face limited budgets.
Moving to the more agile People Platform on Unit4
Business World’s Milestone 5 provided the opportunity
to improve efficiency and effectiveness without adding
new resources to keep up.
While planning Whistler’s upgrade, Unit4 staff conducted
a Health Check to assess usage of the previous version.
“The Health Check was a tremendous benefit to us.
We realized we were doing things to accommodate the
software, when instead the software can accommodate
us,” says Heather Paul.
Unit4’s people focus enables easier upgrades. Intuitive
self-service functionality costs far less for user retraining
or system changes. In fact, according to IDC research,
The Financial Impact of ERP Architecture on the
Annual Cost of Business Change, Unit4 customers’
cost of change is 55% less than those of other ERP
systems. With 170 users on the system, Paul says
it’s intuitive enough that staff super users can easily
train their colleagues to speed up adoption. As the
implementation was completed on time and under
budget, additional features and training are pending and
will make Whistler a true Business World champion.
The benefitsReduced time spent on data entry and administration With significant time savings for staff who no longer have
to keep multiple spreadsheets up to date with extensive,
repetitive data entry, the municipality has been able to
reallocate that time to higher value tasks like analytics
and customer service. The municipality has been able to
digitize and automate vendor relations, ensuring that all
suppliers are paid online and on time.
“ Milestone 5 is easier to use and more intuitive. Staff are being innovative and looking at the best use of the product. If you just maintain the status quo, you don’t benefit from what the software offers. It provided the opportunity to review internal processes, improve overall efficiency and effectiveness, and enable staff to use the technology available to them.”
Heather Paul,Corporate Services & IT
About Unit4Unit4 is a leading provider of enterprise applications empowering people in service organizations. With annual
revenue over $550M and more than 4,000 employees world-wide, Unit4 delivers ERP, industry-focused and best-
in-class applications. Thousands of organizations from sectors including professional services, education, public
services, not-for-profit, real estate, wholesale and financial services benefit from Unit4 solutions. Unit4 is in business
for people.
Improved financial analytics and transparency“Before Milestone 5, our staff struggled to stay
on top of work they didn’t have time for; now
we have been able to reallocate resources to
other tasks, such as data analysis,” says Ken
Roggeman, Whistler’s Director of Finance.
Streamlined user experience and functionality
also enable improved financial visibility and
the ability to easily pull reports in minutes
as opposed to days of data collection and
manual analysis. Now, with the complete
financial visibility provided by Business World,
elected officials and taxpayers can see exactly
what’s going on.
Paul cites the new user interface as a
positive sign of things to come. Whistler’s
next exciting milestone will be exploring the
expense management module and the mobile
capabilities of Business World to squeeze
even more out of the digital revolution so staff
are more successful and their community is
well served.
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