WWF Italia makes preserving the planet easier with Dynamics 365 Business Central

Conserving and protecting for a healthier planet

The World Wildlife Fund was formed to protect the interconnected points that make up Earth’s ecosystem: food, climate, freshwater, wildlife, forests, and oceans. WWF Italia manages those efforts in Italy, placing 40 field workers in critical areas throughout the country—wetlands, coastal areas, and marine protected zones.

A staff of roughly 60 office workers supports the field teams, providing planning and coordination of the conservation projects, fundraising, policy activities, public awareness, education and administration. WWF Italia collaborates with other national conservation agencies throughout Europe, and beyond. “The Mediterranean is our passion,” says Bruno Carlo Ravaglioli, Deputy General Director at WWF Italia. “But we also help to finance programs in South America, Asia, and Africa.”

That work takes dedication—and significant funding. WWF Italia raises about €17 million from a variety of sources, including corporate donations, public agencies, members, and donors among the general public. Those funds must be carefully accounted for, with the same degree of precision that any corporation would use to manage its resources. And like a publicly held corporation, WWF Italia is responsible to a governing board, governmental agency oversight, plus the donors who make its work possible. For many years, the nonprofit made do with what Ravaglioli refers to as a “homemade” accounting system that ran on-premises in its main office. As WWF Italia’s team, donor base, and finances grew, and as regulations became more complex, that system was clearly past its useful life.

Taking a technology about-face

In 2018, Ravaglioli and the WWF Italia team took stock of the issues that hindered their management goals. For one thing, paper was an essential in the aging system. “We printed everything,” recalls Ravaglioli. Formerly the Chief Financial Officer of the organization, he knew the importance of flexible, up-to-the-minute financial reporting. Now he also has responsibility for managing the WWF Italia office properties and ultimate oversight over finance, including taxes and external reporting.

Besides its inability to support the organization, the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that WWF Italia had been using wasn’t customizable. Following a competitive proposal process to select both a system integrator and a cutting-edge ERP system, the nonprofit engaged with Athon, a company owned by OTS Spa, a Gold competency level member of the Microsoft Partner Network, to deploy Dynamics 365 Business Central. The solution covered every item on the WWF Italia requirements list: a cloud-based system with flexible, easily personalized reporting for a variety of audiences. It needed to support the frequent policy amendments that are a way of life for any agency subject to changes in the regulatory winds. A long-time Microsoft 365 customer, the nonprofit appreciated the familiar user interface and connected nature of the entire platform. WWF Italia was also gratified by Microsoft support for nonprofit organizations.

Protecting the planet—with information

The WWF Italia financial team supplies vital reporting to both internal and external groups. Internally, budgets for all the projects that the organization supports must be prepared and circulated. Strict accounting standards must be upheld, such as payment authorizations that require two signatures.

External reporting requirements were extensive—and crucial to supporting conservation. WWF Italia needed to send reports to individual donors, especially those who choose a specific project that they are passionate about. The nonprofit found Power BI could play a key role. “With Dynamics 365 Business Central and Power BI, we can query the system directly to report on what we’ve spent on lion conservation, for example,” says Ravaglioli. “For the first time ever, we can immediately print a report to send to a donor or other external stakeholder. I can also request a different version of that information that’s tailored to the needs of the lion conservation team.”

The strict European Union reporting that WWF Italia was obliged to submit every quarter for every one of its 76 projects once exacted a heavy toll on staff. Under the old system, the process required printing spreadsheets, calculating and manually selecting the relevant figures, then initiating internal checks and approvals. “Each report we sent to the European Commission cost us a week of time for our project management staff,” recalls Ravaglioli. “Now they spend less than a day to complete the process, including approvals. This cuts quarterly reporting time by about 65 percent.”

Adding Business Central easily to a nonprofit world 

Paolo Iacono, Dynamics 365 Senior Consultant at Athon, found that it was simple to apply Dynamics 365 Business Central processes and terms to the nonprofit space. Donors are customers, and each conservation project is a job. “We helped WWF Italia link the job management function for their conservation projects to their general ledger in Business Central,” he explains. “This created a dramatic improvement in workflow for them.”

After adopting Business Central, WWF Italia gave up its three servers and realized immediate savings. And the project management staff are free to concentrate on projects rather than manually grinding through columns of figures. That created much-needed breathing room in the nonprofit’s strict budget. “We have a very tight budget, and although costs constantly increase, it’s difficult to get the approvals we need to expand those funds,” explains Ravaglioli. “Cost-effective, flexible systems are absolutely essential for us.”

With an estimated 85 percent of the implementation complete, Ravaglioli looks forward to continuing the momentum. He hopes that the Italian Revenue Agency will eventually create an interface to its system that would enable payments directly from Business Central. But today, he’s delighted with the progress WWF Italia has made not just in achieving its business management goals, but in the modern, sustainable way it does so. “All of our systems are in the cloud, so we don’t produce nearly as much paper,” he says. “And whenever we need to produce information about our activities, it’s easy to find and share. It’s a really great evolution.”

“We started with a very primitive system,” says Ravaglioli. “Now we can manage all the business tasks that support WWF Italia with Dynamics 365 Business Central. We’re spending less time on administration and more time on conservation.”

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