From legacy to cloud finance software: how RRC International transformed its training business.

From legacy to cloud finance software: how RRC International transformed its training business

The time savings on just one task – bank reconciliation – have freed up almost a day every month for the finance team at RRC International since the business adopted iplicit.

Established in 1928, the business, better known to many as the Rapid Results College Ltd, has helped millions of people across the world achieve professional, educational and vocational qualifications.

It is one of the UK’s leading international providers of training in health and safety and in environmental management.

Complexity in RRC International’s accounting

RRC International’s £5m turnover is generated by a very large number of products in the form of courses bought by individuals and companies.

“We sell all around the world, including the Middle East and India, with admin, sales and finance staff based here in Wimbledon,” says Head of Finance, Andrew Fox.

“Our organisation is quite project-based. Each workshop we do – whether it’s live, online, classroom or delivered to a whole company – is designated as a project, so that’s one area where it can become complicated.

“But the other area of complexity is that we have an awful lot of products, which can make tasks like bank reconciliation and project/product analysis really time-consuming.”

Switching to iplicit

RRC International had been working with its previous legacy system for around 20-25 years.

“It’s an old legacy system. You lack the ability to create the reports you need, and these systems don’t allow you to drill down into the financial information the way you’d want to,” says Andrew.

“Most systems these days are cloud-based. The legacy system had been adapted to work remotely, but it wasn’t a true cloud system.

“With a modern, true cloud system, we knew we’d be easily able to pull in information using an API (application programming interface) and that we’d be able to store PDFs and other documents in the system, so we wouldn’t have to go looking for invoices.”

iplicit vs Sage Intacct

RRC International compared the systems it could switch to and spent time comparing iplicit with Sage Intacct in particular.

“We went with iplicit for a couple of key reasons,” says Andrew.

“Firstly, we were able to get deep into the detail of what we wanted from iplicit. With Sage Intacct, Sage has its process for doing things and you felt it was harder to step out of that process and get them to do something different. The team at iplicit were much more flexible in the way they dealt with our requirements.

“The other reason was that our excellent IT guys here were impressed by the iplicit system. They thought it was very modern and that our front-end system could be adapted to easily talk to iplicit. And they felt there would be fewer issues with iplicit as we grew and changed in the future.”

How iplicit has saved time at RRC International

“We deal with both businesses and consumers – B2B and B2C – and we have a lot of relatively small transactions – say from £100 to £1,500,” says Andrew.

“So we’re constantly processing those transactions, which come in through banks, through credit cards and through PayPal. With iplicit, it’s quite straightforward to process them all, get them in the system and match them up quickly.”

The major time saving so far has come from bank and general ledger (GL) reconciliation processes.

“We get a lot of small payments from individuals who often don’t put payment references on them. Someone might say their payment is for a particular course but there might be hundreds on that course. There are so many of those transactions that we do bank and GL reconciliations every day to be able to allocate each payment,” says Andrew.

“iplicit has cut the amount of time we spend on bank and other general ledger reconciliations. Not only is there a time saving from previously manually keying transactions into the system, but also a higher level of accuracy as bank and other transactions are automatically entered via the feeds. This enables transactions to be identified earlier which in turn leads to a more satisfied customer as they are quickly enrolled.”

Integration with other systems

RRC International needed its accounting system to integrate with a front-end system called LTM. iplicit's open API allows for such niche integrations, rather than limiting integration to programs that are in more widespread use.

“Our sales invoicing is still done via LTM,” says Andrew. “Any payment that’s taken with the sale is posted on the LTM system and then the API transfers it over into iplicit. The integration of the two systems works really well.”

Better reporting with iplicit

RRC is benefiting from more powerful and flexible financial reporting since moving to iplicit.

“We’ve organised for some regular reports to be generated that are working out really well,” says Andrew.

“We’ve also used iplicit’s live integration with Excel to produce reports of our own, which have worked well.

“The big difference is that when we want a report produced, we can produce it, rather than having to go to our IT team as we used to – and that saves a lot of time.”

Implementation of iplicit

Implementation was quick and easy for RRC, which began training its staff in April and went live with iplicit on July 1.

“We were very pleased with the training and implementation,” says Andrew.

“You hear horror stories about implementation, with things going wrong or delayed, but the process was very smooth. We went live on schedule, with no issues.

“Coming from a legacy system, you’re not used to all the features you can expect from new software, so you’re quite backward-looking in a way. There were features that we thought wouldn’t really be any use to us, but it’s important to be open-minded about what the system can do.”

Learn more

Find out more about iplicit’s cloud accounting software by taking a quick online tour or book a tailored demonstration.

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