St Andrew’s First Aid reinvents its business with Sage 200 solution from Pinnacle
February 19, 2019 | News
Despite being 137 years old, St Andrew’s First Aid constantly looks for new ways to meet the needs of Scottish people and businesses, with an evolving range of first aid related services and products. At the same time, it deploys technology to support its growth and manage its processes. This has proved a successful strategy: in the past twelve months alone, retail sales of training and first aid consumables and equipment have increased by 8%.
As the country’s only dedicated first aid charity, St Andrew’s First Aid takes its responsibility very seriously. Operations & Policy Director Jim Dorman says: “We receive no government funding. We’re solely reliant on our own activities and every penny of profit is ploughed back into our parent charity.”
Jim and his colleagues rely on a Sage 200 business management system, implemented and supported by Pinnacle to help build an efficient, dynamic organisation: “Sage 200 helps to ensure that we make a profit on our products and services. Meanwhile, as our trusted technology partner, Pinnacle has saved the day for us many times.”
As St Andrew’s First Aid has grown in size and scale, so has its Sage 200 solution, expanding far beyond its original remit of supporting the charity’s accounting operations. Sage 200 now reaches into many corners of the business. Sage software helps in managing the events covered by the charity’s teams of volunteer first aiders, and in configuring and pricing both off-the-shelf and bespoke first aid kits and supplies. A third-party solution has been added to allow volunteers working remotely to claim expenses through their mobile device.
Pinnacle has ensured that all the software modules are tightly integrated, as James Lloyd, Head of Finance and IT, notes: “Everything flows straight into Sage 200, creating a single source of business and finance information. This equips us with all the information we need to comply with statutory requirements on reporting as a charity.”
Jim Dorman sums up: “We’ve come a long way from being an old-style, paper-based organisation where ledgers were wheel-barrowed to people’s desks and training certificates were handwritten. Adopting Sage 200 has been an important platform of this drive to greater efficiency and business control. As a result, we’ve been able to reinvent ourselves as a streamlined, progressive organisation.”
Pinnacle Business Development Consultant Ross Pairman, comments: “At Pinnacle, we’re immensely proud to partner with St Andrew’s First Aid as it builds on its heritage with a forward-looking IT strategy. The management team is always open to exploring innovative ways to draw on the ability of Sage 200 to evolve and expand to help the organisation take on new 21st century challenges.”
Read a case study in full, on how Pinnacle supports St Andrew's First Aid with Sage 200
