Before, month-end reporting was a slow, fraught, manual process at MADD. The organization had to download reports of their monthly giving from Salesforce, massage the results, then upload them again—a process that typically took an entire day. By the time they could provide numbers back to their teams in the field, the data was “old and cold!”
To fix that, and be able to access timely data, MADD brought in Sage Intacct as its new GL platform, then went about the process of finding the right folks to integrate it with Salesforce.
According to MADD CFO Lista Hightower, it was clear that Venn's owner, Scott Hollrah, fully understood their problems, articulating on the spot how they could be solved. Hightower said they were so impressed—that was all it took. Venn was hired, and team-lead Chase Friedman soon began working with MADD management to understand the organization’s internal accounting rules, methodically building the recipes needed to make every single transaction type work.
“Chase was patient,” Hightower said, laughing, “When we’d say ‘oh, we forgot to tell you about this little wrinkle in the situation…’ he’d just go back, rebuild, and rework it. They are wonderful to work with.”
Hightower believes that without Venn’s help, they couldn’t have made it happen. She recounts that before, she felt the organization was hostage to the one person on staff familiar with the intricacies of the process. Now month-end close no longer weighs on her because the work is performed without the need for human involvement. Best of all, because the data is pushed to Intacct on a timely basis, information is immediately available to MADD’s people in the field. This, she says, has fostered a new level of trust between MADD’s field teams and the national office.
“I believe that information is knowledge and power…,” says Hightower. “And, now our people have it. The folks in the field can drill down and see where the sales are, see the ebb and flow of interaction on a daily basis, and know statuses.”
Since its founding more than 35 years ago, MADD has been credited with reducing US drunk driving deaths by more than half, saving more than 370,000 lives, and has served more than 840,000 victims. The Dallas-based non-profit focuses on drunk-driving prevention, drugged-driving prevention, and teen drinking.