b'How Sage Intacct empowers Indigenous finance teams to overcome their business challengesMelanie Touchie of MNP shares how Indigenous administration organizations are leveraging core financial software to overcome their unique challengesChallenge: The finance teams of Indigenous organizations can face under- Challenge: Indigenous organizations finance teams manage both sensitive staffing and high staff turnover social data as well as commercial dataOne of the key issues facing many Indigenous organizations is keeping theirThe diverse portfolio of programs that an Indigenous organization has to manage finance teams fully staffed and having a plan in place to retain and pass onis unrivalled in other sectors. For example, the list of programs that might exist their knowledge internally. This is something that Melanie Touchie, Managerwithin a First Nations administrative organization could look like this:of Indigenous Services at MNP, has experienced firsthand. Melanie worked with her own Nation for 10 years, where she was mentored by a financial Culture and LanguageCommunicationscontroller who believed it was important to look within the Nation to fill va-Business and Economic DevelopmentEducationcancies. This, however, was not always possible, as it has become increasingly Fisheries and ForestryEmploymentdifficult to recruit and grow skills internally.TourismHealth and Healing Child and Family ServicesHousingUnfortunately, thats something very typical in the industry, explains Mela-nie. There is a high turnover of employees and there is little to no successionThis blend of social and commercial programs that exists under the remit of the planning with some Nations. Its a very big gap. The challenge is that most offinancial team creates a heightened level of responsibility, especially when one these Nations are in remote places where recruitment is difficult, and thencan see the real-world implications of the decisions on the community, some-you add a pandemic on top of itits almost impossible. So, its definitelytimes instantly.something thats an issue we have observed in the industry. The programs and services that Nations roll out are a lot more personal. So in-Solution: Consult with a technology partner to leverage Sage Intacct tostead of an [entity saying] Were selling a product or Weve got this new service, Support your members now -apply the technology where you need it the most youre actually caring for families and can see the product or service being utilized Since the advent of cloud-based core financial software, we have heard howin the community, usually right outside your door, explains Melanie.finance teams across a range of sectors have leveraged the likes of SageThis more personal business case calls for a secure software solution with controls and for generations to come Intacct to reclaim time from monotonous data entry tasks and overwhelmingin place that allow multiple user profiles to be set up according to their specific excel processes. In this way, they free up resources to help drive their orga- data needs. For example, a user that requires access to a commercial entity like nization forward. In the case of Indigenous organizations, the reduction intourism wouldnt need access to information on child and family services.manual processes can make up for the fact that the finance team might only have one or two members. In a sense, the technology takes on the role of anSolution: Choose software that has security standards that match the needs unofficial support staff. of your organizationChallenge: Existing software package cant satisfy reporting needs When it comes to controlling access to Sage Intacct in your business, Sage and As the former CFO of Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation, Melanie has firsthandthe customer work together to meet the customers needs on access and security, experience in the difficulties facing Indigenous organizations trying to createwhile upholding the security standards set out by Canadian authorities.accurate quarterly financial reports throughout the year. Continuous growthChallenge: The diasporic nature of Indigenous communities, combined with a combined with the arrival of new staff often results in the finance team losinglack of communication infrastructure, can be barriers to finance operations Economic partnerships and business relationships are becoming moretime trying to make their legacy systems fit their current business needs. running smoothlycomplex. To make the most of these opportunities, Indigenous communitiesWe had three unique businesses run separately off our Nations books. AndAdministration operations among Indigenous communities were heavily affected those three businesses probably took 75% of our time because some of theirby the COVID-19 pandemic, due in part to lack of access to necessary technology need capacity, particularly in finance, management, and economicexpenses, their projects and their government reporting were so complex.among community members. This, coupled with the fact that the culture of Indig-Seventy-five per cent of our time was spent unravelling their reporting, whichenous communities can be predominately verbal, meant that the shift to remote development. was so difficult, says Melanie. working and videoconferencing, etc., was particularly hard on the communities.Even though the Nation sometimes sourced external accounting and advisoryUsing her own Nation as an example, Melanie describes how the diasporic nature We believe technology can facilitate this positive change. And MNP can proveservices from MNP, the effort to ensure both parties numbers matched wasof the community increased the challenges created by working remotely.enormous. All the data needed to be reconciled before the Nations leadership it: weve worked alongside Indigenous governments and organizations forcould be presented with a consolidated view of the Nations financial standing. Probably 60% of our member population lives away from the Tofino area. Mem-bers needed to be located [and we needed to advise them of] meetings, receiving more than 40 years, providing technologies and services to support Solution: Leverage Sage Intaccts dimensional reporting capabilities programs and services like food, community fish distributions, etc., Melanie says. Sage Intaccts general ledger includes multiple dimensions that capture theBecause of the pandemic, all of our Nations services immediately went virtual to self-determination and sustainable communities. context of an organizations transactions, operational measures and budgets.reach out to our members.This allows its finance team to create reports that provide a real-time snap- Solution: Ensure your technology solution can integrate with cloud communi-Visit MNP.ca/DigitalGovernment to learn more shot of the financial vitals without having to run an overly complex chart ofcations and office solutionsaccounts. This in turn frees up time for the finance team to analyze data andAn upside that Melanie and MNP discovered was that once the community came make strategic decisions that benefit the organization. to grips with technologies like Zoom and Microsoft, members who had been With Sage Intacct, when I started drilling into all the different projects andsomewhat removed from the day-to-day conversations of the Nation were seeing all of the different ways you can treat those dimensions, I knew it wasnow more involved than ever. A similar success can be achieved by stakeholders Kenny Ansems, CPA, CA, CAFM, B.C. / Yukon Provincial Director, Indigenous Services going to serve the Nation well for a long time. Its going to be able to growlooking to access financial data remotely and collaborate on it by using Sage with them and handle as much as they need it to. Where clients are reallyIntacct Collaborate. This secure social layer covers every process and device so an 778.372. 5344|kenny.ansems@mnp.ca going to see the value is when they no longer have to get separate solu-tionsorganizations finance team, as well as its other service teams, can cooperatively for the different entities that the finance team manages, says Melanie. resolve any issue.MNP.ca'