LOVIS EOS streamlines and controls processes across multiple FMCN locations, optimising project budget management and financial visibility for stakeholders.
FMCN is a not-for-profit private organisation that finances and supports the strategic activities of companies across Mexico to preserve the country’s natural resources. This is achieved by creating public/private alliances, jointly-branded initiatives and education, plus developing guidelines and financing innovative projects that conserve and sustain natural resources.
Prior to choosing LOVIS EOS, FMCN had inconsistent processes which resulted in a lack of administrative control, limited accounting capabilities and poor communication. In contrast, the new system gives the organisation greater control of its endowment funds and other donation programmes, it enables transactions to be monitored in real time (generating daily financial statements) and ensures regular audits/reports can be shared.
The problem
FMCN is based in Mexico City and Veracruz, but communication between the two offices was poor. Accounting is managed from Mexico City and a key responsibility is to manage project budgets and provide donors with financial statements.
This lack of control, coupled with geographical barriers and a limited accounting system (where the same information was managed by eight different areas, multiplying the workload with varying accounting and administrative processes), contributed to losses and failures within the institution.
The solution
Tired of running a business with administrative and operational flaws, FMCN evaluated several options to improve their operational processes and information flows.
All agreed LOVIS EOS could streamline their processes, maximise resources and reduce the number of employees wasting time and effort on identical tasks.
Once the implementation process began, FMCN’s first barrier to increased productivity was employee resistance to change. In order to overcome this, the CEO encouraged colleagues to forget old habits and spread the word the LOVIS system was the way forward. Roll-out was achieved on time, in 19 weeks.
Benefits
Once implementation was complete, FMCN reported a substantial improvement in the areas it considered to be failing, for example, being able to monitor and analyse, online and in real time, the budget and cash flow of each project, while controlling bank accounts and generating financial statements every morning.
Having reduced areas of duplicate effort, this impacted other critical tasks, improving:
- Informed decision-making
- Data extraction
- Information analysis
- Amount of time to plan and execute projects
- Donor transparency
- Corporative accountability and governance
- Financial statement reporting.
In addition to the operational benefits, LOVIS EOS has improved employees’ quality of life, reducing the amount of time they spend on daily tasks. Data from Mexico City and Veracruz is held in a single database, easing the flow of information, generation of reports and online registration.
“We had evaluated three different options, but it was a nightmare because we had to invest in infrastructure and the implementation was going to take a lot of time. That’s why we decided LOVIS was the best option; apart from offering more benefits than others, its cloud solution and methodology would help us to substantially improve our operations.”
Ximena Yáñez, CFO