Nonprofit Success: Women’s Bean Project’s Transition from Scribe to SmartConnect

In 1989, Josepha “Jossy” Eyre, had a vision of helping women achieve independence and self-sufficiency through long-term employment.

Using $500 of her own money, Jossy founded Women’s Bean Project, a non-profit organization that provides on-the-job training and life skills classes to help women identify their talents and launch their careers.

Women’s Bean Project sells baking mixes, coffee and tea, dog treats as well as snacks and spices in nearly 1,000 stores as well as their online shop, Amazon and Gifts for Good.

Success with Microsoft Dynamics GP

Women’s Bean Project has used Microsoft Dynamics GP as part of their social enterprise since 2011. They are unique as they aren’t only a non-profit, but also a manufacturer. “GP gives us the best of both worlds as it allows us to manage the dynamics of both. It allows us to be the manufacturer, manage the program, provide paychecks to the women in the program and process donations.” says Anne Davis, Controller.

Supporting multiple sales channels and platforms means their financial system must track the different pricing tiers and complexities, which Dynamics GP handles very well. However manual data movement between their sales platforms, shipping application and Dynamics GP was a tedious, time-consuming task for the Women’s Bean Project team.

Knowing integration between their business applications could save time and reduce errors, Women’s Beans Project implemented Scribe and were happy with the efficiencies it created.

“You have to change to stay in business. A lot of our integrations started that way,” says Davis. “The first was our online store. We were hand entering that data into Dynamics GP and we knew this wasn’t efficient.”

In addition to their online store, they also import all Amazon and Gifts for Good orders, information from their donation platform and corporate uploaders (custom orders for corporate giving initiatives received via Excel spreadsheet).

Each sales platform where their products are ordered requires an upload of tracking numbers so vendors can communicate to their customers when an item has been shipped and where it’s at in the shipping process. Today SmartConnect builds the CSV export files for those vendors, which is easily uploaded to the vendor site.

During their busy time, they previously entered between 150-250 transactions a day in Dynamics GP and as well as tracking numbers to the associated sales platforms. “All the importing and exporting was manual and with a staff of 12, it was hard to get all of the orders entered,” says Davis.

The Switch to SmartConnect

The complexity of their integration solution forced the Women’s Beans Project team to rely on their Dynamics GP partner to maintain their existing integrations and build additional integrations.

As a non-profit organization, Women’s Beans Project is always looking for ways to reduce costs. They reached out to their partner, Njevity, to look for ways to reduce costs associated with their integrations.

“When I was introduced to SmartConnect by my partner, I realized how much more freedom it gives us [versus Scribe] as we can create our own integrations for different systems and processes as we grow without having to utilize our partner for services. It’s very easy to use, very intuitive and straightforward,” Davis says. “Plus, it’s so much faster to import large orders using SmartConnect. With Scribe, we’d upload and walk away for 30 minutes. SmartConnect accomplishes the same import in five minutes.”

To switch to SmartConnect, including costs for moving their existing integrations, Women’s Bean Project determined they will recoup the upfront costs in savings by using SmartConnect in 18 months. “After that, we’ll continue to benefit from the reduced cost of SmartConnect without any loss of features or functionality,” says Davis.

The thought of creating and performing integrations can sometimes be overwhelming. Moving their existing integrations from Scribe to SmartConnect proved to be a great learning opportunity for Anne, as she quickly gained the knowledge she needed to be able to configure new integrations and manage existing integrations.

“At Njevity, our mission is to improve the life and success of our customers and SmartConnect has enabled us to do that for Women’s Bean Project,” says KJ Krueger, Senior Application Consultant at Njevity. “When using Scribe, Anne and her team were relying heavily on us for setting up, maintaining and updating integrations, as well as troubleshooting errors. SmartConnect is such a user-friendly interface. It gives them the ability to do all these things on their own now, which saves them valuable time and money.”

Women’s Bean Project continues to identify opportunities to increase efficiency and better serve their vendors using SmartConnect. “Being a social enterprise where we have so many avenues for sales, it’s nearly impossible for everything to be integrated but you have to make it work as efficiently as possible for everyone involved and SmartConnect has done that for us.”

It’s so much faster to import large orders using SmartConnect. With Scribe, we’d upload and walk away for 30 minutes. SmartConnect accomplishes the same import in five minutes.

Anne Davis, Controller at Women’s Bean Project