The Musicians’ Union embraces the benefits of Cloud SaaS

Sage Intacct ticks all the boxes for valued union

29th September 2021

The Musicians’ Union (MU) represents over 30,000 members across the music industry, working to maximise employment, improve conditions and offer support and legal assistance where possible. We spoke to Head of Finance, Beverley Dawes about the role they play and the reasons behind their decision to move from Sage 200 to Sage Intacct at this point in time.

The past 18 months have been incredibly hard on musicians, and the MU has had to adapt to ensure they remain supported. “Musicians haven't been earning and have had very little from the government. We’ve been working tirelessly to support as many people as possible. One way was to create a hardship fund so there is access to funds for those in desperate need, and we even helped members with their Crowdfunding campaigns. The whole period has been a hard slog for the team, but everyone has pulled together to help.” 

Moving with the times 

Beverley is a veteran at the MU, having been with the organisation for 18 years - and is going to miss the fantastic culture when she retires next year. But before she does, she wants to leave her beloved colleagues with a somewhat unusual parting gift…a new cloud finance system which compliments their new way of working remotely!   
 
“I absolutely love working here. There's a lot of loyalty because of the type of organisation it is and I want to leave with everything well organised.” With only two people working in their Finance team and no internal IT department, efficiency and simplicity sit at the top of the list in terms of their requirements. By automating as much as possible for her colleagues, Beverley can help give them more time to focus on supporting musicians.  

Beverley has been a dedicated Datel customer since 2006 - almost as long as she’s been at the MU. She therefore trusts the Datel team, and recently discussed with us how the Union has evolved over recent years, and now has different requirements from when they initially chose Sage 200. Although the existing system has served them well over the years, these changes mean Beverley has been thinking about alternatives.  

“As so many of us are now working from home it's clear we need a system that’s designed for remote working. Something stable, secure and Cloud based will help us work more efficiently from different locations. Datel has always understood what we need and after some conversations, they were excited to suggest Intacct as a good fit for us. I like the support I get with Datel, so I was over the moon to hear Datel offered a Cloud Sage solution that ticks all the boxes."   

A future-proof solution 

Beverley knew exactly what the MU needed to meet their future demands. As well as it being Cloud based they needed a solution that could handle partial VAT exemption, while allowing for configuration changes as the business changes and grows. After being shown Sage Intacct, Beverley was immediately impressed with its features; “With Intacct, I can quickly pick up my tablet and respond to enquiries in real time. Backups are all there, so there's no need to rely on external IT for that, and upgrades are part of the license. Once we are up to speed with the new reporting, it's going to be so valuable for the team to have access to the tailored dashboards.”  

Having a love for organisation, Beverley is enjoying getting stuck into “Project Intacct” - and is feeling good about her upcoming retirement. Once fully implemented, she's confident that Intacct is the perfect solution to leave her colleagues with. “I can see the benefits of Intacct already. Since so much is automated, there's going to be huge time savings. I want everything in place before I go, and it looks like we will get there very soon.”