Epic Employment Service is a community based organisation, with 27 service centres across Australia and New Zealand. As a full employment service agency, EPIC operates a wide range of programs for job seekers. Epic also provides a critical community role in assisting disabled and disadvantaged people into employment. Epic’s funding comes from Federal Government and this means compliance is a key efficiency factor for the organisation.
The organisation was previously running Quickbooks which evidently couldn’t cope with the scale of the operation. Epic has over 300 staff on the payroll and processes a large amount of accounts payable each week. These driving factors plus the need for greater reporting led Wayne Herrmann, CFO for EPIC, to search for an effective enterprise management system “as our organisation has grown, so have the demands on the service, clearly we needed a system powerful enough to do the job at hand and more besides”, he says. |
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“Epic are driven to work with our clients in an empathetic manner that builds trust and confidence, with blueStar we found those same values” |
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Wayne and the senior team assessed 3 competing ERP systems for suitability, SAGE, Microsoft - Great Plains and Greentree. Full integration was high on Epic’s wish-list as was a modular solution that needed no clumsy interfaces with 3rd party products. Only one of the three ticked all the boxes, Greentree. However, at this point Wayne explains that another big piece of the puzzle ‘had to fit’ before the final solution choice was made “we wanted excellence in service delivery in all aspects and with blueStar we found that” he says. Suitably impressed, Epic invested in Greentree Payroll, HR Management, Workflow, Financialsand eHR.
 Service providers usually find it difficult to not only deliver consistently but also to effectively differentiate themselves. The technology landscape in particular is littered with the services business casualties to prove this fact. It would seem Epic are convinced of finding ‘a diamond in the rough’, “we didn’t feel sold too, rather, blueStar ‘advised’ and made us feel comfortable says Wayne. It could be argued that for a Not for Profit, developing a close relationship with a key services provider is especially vital “blueStar are genuine, we sought a partner that would stand by us for at least 10 years and we got it”, said Wayne.
“There is an integrity about blueStar that is compelling, we now look to them to advise us on where we might best be able to lever the solution in line with our objectives for the future”
- Wayne Herrmann, CFO, Epic Employment Service
The culture of an organisation is almost conceptual and difficult to pinpoint but maybe it is most significantly identified when it matches the principals of a partnering organisation. “Epic are driven to work with our clients in an empathetic manner that builds trust and confidence, with blueStar we found those same values” said Wayne. Undoubtedly this had provided benefits to Epic that otherwise would simply not have materialised “there is an integrity about blueStar that is compelling, we now look to them to advise us on where we might best be able to lever the solution in line with our objectives for the future” concludes Wayne.”
About Epic
Epic Employment Service is a community based organisation with headquarters based at Windsor on the north side of Brisbane. Epic has service centres at 27 locations spread from Rockhampton in North Qld down to Lismore NSW in the south; and also at Christchurch and Dunedin in New Zealand (ACC funded). Since 1990, Epic has set the standard in Australia for innovative job seeker solutions. By 2001, over 1,000 clients had been placed into employment and the total has grown annually thereafter. Epic provide a free service which is funded primarily by the Commonwealth Government of Australia and prides itself on its highly skilled workforce, that combines tertiary qualified and industry experienced professionals. As a full employment service agency Epic run a wide range of programs for job seekers including a disability employment program.
For more information visit: www.epic.org.au
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