Boosting accounting efficiency with Business Central

Bedard HR: a fast-growing company!

The consulting firm has witnessed significant growth throughout its 25 years of existence. It now has 40 times more employees than when it started, with 9 offices across Canada. Given current labour shortages, Bedard HR will surely continue to have the wind in its sails. Such business expansion often goes together with growing technological needs. The firm wanted to migrate from NAV to Business Central and update its payroll and time and attendance management software. In addition to carrying out the migration project, Gestisoft helped the firm choose the right partners for these two complementary solutions.

How to improve accounting efficiency?

When a company is responsible for a payroll as large as the one that Bedard HR processes weekly, it's no surprise that payroll and all accounting-related activities are fundamental to the company's efficiency and profitability. Since the implementation of NAV in 2015, the company had a range of improvements in mind that it wanted to implement, which, unfortunately, wasn't possible with the version of NAV that was in use at the time. Migrating to Business Central not only enabled greater optimization but also better visibility into its financial performance, all while facilitating day-to-day accounting operations.

Why Gestisoft?

Bedard HR had previously worked with Gestisoft, notably on their CRM migration in 2018. At the time, the consulting firm chose to work with Gestisoft because the two companies shared similar values. It's easy to overlook the importance of choosing an implementation partner when the project is going smoothly. However, when problems arise, and there's also a clash of values, the situation can become very difficult to manage and spiral out of control.

Since Bedard HR does business with English-speaking provinces and aims to expand its services to the United States, Gestisoft's ability to work both in English and French was also an important factor. Thanks to its wealth of experience dealing with large-scale projects, Gestisoft could recommend other partners (Primo Payday for the payroll software and Synerion for time and attendance management), who each succeeded in addressing the needs of Bedard HR.

A complex undertaking

Drawing on their past experiences, both Gestisoft and Bedard HR knew full well that integrating three solutions would not be without its challenges. Unsurprisingly, the project team encountered difficulties and had to face major technological hurdles.

A project of this magnitude must obviously consider a viable solution adoption strategy if it is to be successful. This process also came with its share of challenges. Once the project was launched, Bédard Resources needed more support than what had been anticipated. However, the Gestisoft team made sure to find time to provide additional assistance to those who needed it.

Secrets to a successful business partnership

Several key success factors were identified from the project's outset, but the most important, for both Gestisoft and Bedard HR, was undoubtedly the need for transparent communication. At every stage, the team and the project manager ensured that communication was always clear and complete.

Building the perfect project team

When it comes to technology solutions, you spend a lot of time evaluating all the various options, but you sometimes neglect to give equal importance to the people whom you're going to entrust with the project afterwards. One of the things that has made Bédard so successful, in this project as well as others that had previously been undertaken, is having someone outside the user team to spearhead and facilitate the transition to the new solution. Julie Lachance, with whom we spoke while writing this case study, has fulfilled this role more than once in her career at Bedard HR. 

She's quick to point out how crucial it is to have people who are curious and seek to understand the process rather than to build your project team based on each person's title and responsibilities. There's also a tendency to underestimate the time commitment required for a company to change or implement its system. It's inevitable that software adoption will require active participation in the implementation process from beginning to end. Therefore, it's not possible for a controller or an accountant technician to perform their daily duties normally while also participating in a software implementation or migration project.

Results that speak for themselves

Following the migration to Business Central, Bédard Ressources has been able to simplify many of the accounting team's routine operations, including sending pay stubs, invoices and statements. Paying vendors with bank transfers can now be automated and the effort required to process payroll, a colossal task for the Bédard team, has decreased by 10%.