Camino Real Community Services is a political subdivision of the State of Texas providing services and support to residents with mental illness and intellectual or developmental disabilities across 9 counties in Southern Texas. Through its guiding principles of opening doors through “choice, dignity and respect”, Camino Real’s efforts empower Texas residents with disabilities with the freedom to participate and contribute in their communities to the fullest extent possible.
Discontinued Legacy ERP
With a growing number of service offerings and a legacy ERP system that was rumored to be phasing out, Associate CFO Russell Rakowitz knew they needed a better solution. After researching software options, Camino Real chose to move to Sage 300. “Our legacy solution had very little import features, forcing us to manually enter data, which was tedious, time consuming, and left too many opportunities for error.”
After reaching out to multiple software vendors and receiving only video-conferenced software demonstrations and lackluster personal attention, Camino Real decided to reach out to Mindover Software who then came to visit them for a personalized demonstration.
Russell explains, “In previous years, our former CFO had worked with Mindover Software and remembered them for their attention to detail, business expertise, and customer service. Mindover’s team made a personal visit to our office to demonstrate Sage 300. Using our data, they showed us how the solution could work in a nonprofit environment and the benefits it brought to the organization. Mindover’s face-to-face demonstration made it easy for us to select them as the partner we could trust to handle this complex transition.”
Working Past ERP Barriers
Transitioning from an old system to a modern ERP solution created a language barrier. The legacy accounting system was written in a completely outdated format compared to Sage 300. Camino Real had thousands of transactions to export out of their ERP system. Mindover Software began translating and got right to work assisting Camino Real with setting up the general ledger, accounts payable, and many other components.
Russell explains, “We had a lot of trouble setting up accounts with the new system because the format was so different from the old one. Mindover Software bridged the gap between the old system and Sage 300 by helping us understand the differences. This was huge when we began setting up our chart of accounts and helped tremendously when moving vendors into the new accounts payable system.”
Many elements of the old system had limitations with data entry and reporting that were solved with Sage 300. Russell comments, “The new system created useful options when it came to implementing the software that had not existed in the old one. There were new reports that could be designed for our needs. Mindover configured Sage 300 reporting and automated several reporting processes. One report used to take me 2 hours to create now only takes me 15 minutes.”
Above and Beyond Service
During the migration effort, Mindover Software worked closely with Camino Real to not only replace an existing legacy system but also to enhance the functionality and add new features that didn’t exist in the old one.
Russell comments, “Our organization is unique. We are required to provide highly detailed reports to the State. Mindover took the time to understand the inner workings of our organization with such attention to detail. I am thankful that they helped us transition to the new ERP software and would recommend them to anyone.”
