ATLANTA – Jan. 22, 2019 – Sage (FTSE: SGE), the market leader in cloud business management solutions, today announced that Creative Dining Services has utilized Sage Intacct, a solution available in Sage Business Cloud, to increase operational efficiency by eliminating 350 hours of manual processes per week. The company also improved accounts receivable collections by 12% increasing cash flow by $760,000. Rapid growth was driven by the ability to quickly scale the company to 70 client locations across 12 states.
Founded in 1990, Creative Dining Services provides high caliber, customer-centric food and hospitality services for higher education institutions, senior living facilities, corporations, and conference venues. The company is focused on providing transparent hospitality services and flexible, custom programs to fit a community’s needs.
Why Sage Intacct?
As Creative Dining Services began to undergo rapid expansion, the company realized its traditional accounting solution could not support their high pace of growth. For example, finance teams were spending hundreds of hours each week on manually processing P&L reports. After evaluating a number of cloud-based financial management platforms, including Oracle NetSuite, Creative Dining Services selected Sage Intacct for its rich reporting, customizability, affordability, and ease of use. Working with implementation partner, Maner Costerisan, Creative Dining services seamlessly replaced its old system with Sage Intacct.
“The company had grown too big for QuickBooks,” said Creative Dining Services’ CFO Jeff Banaszak.” Creative Dining planned to continue growing rapidly and we knew we needed a new accounting system. With Sage Intacct, we now have a powerful back-office system to match our creativity at the front of the house.”
After implementing the Sage Intacct solution, Creative Dining Services realized significant benefits, including:
Real-time data to inform timely action: On-site food service directors gained the ability to track invoices due in real-time, enabling a 12% improvement in accounts receivable collections and increasing cash flow by $760,000.
Elimination of manual work to increase efficiency: The company now benefits from streamlined workflows and automated data consolidation that has eliminated 350 hours per week of manual accounting work. This allows onsite staff to focus on front-of-house customer service and culinary support.
Custom dashboards to increase transparency: Finance teams leverage custom dashboards to share key metrics and detailed transactional reports with clients, increasing mutual trust and satisfaction.
“We’re seeing massive savings due to the automation we’ve accomplished with Sage Intacct,” said Banaszak. “Rather than crunching numbers all day, we are seen as strategic business advisors to our client location units.”
For more information on how Creative Dining Services uses Sage Intacct, view the full case study and customer video.