If you want amaZING health care, look no further than Zing Health. The Chicago-based company formed recently to offer its members a high-quality, low-cost Medicare Advantage plan with the mission of “helping doctors coordinate better care.”
Challenge: An implementation left undone
As with many new companies, Zing Health started operations with QuickBooks as its accounting system. It soon became apparent that this solution would not last long-term for the fast-growing company.
“(Zing Health is) doing big things very quickly so we needed the next level up,” said Mete Sahin, interim CFO.
Sahin was familiar with Microsoft Dynamics GP, which he knew to be an excellent mid-level accounting system that Zing Health could use well into the future. After discussing options with their consulting partner, he decided instead to purchase Microsoft’s cloud business management solution, Dynamics 365 Business Central. He knew he would need to rely on their partner extensively for configuration and training since the system was new to him as well.
Unfortunately for Zing Health, their partner had recently undergone leadership changes, and Sahin soon noticed a negative impact on his company’s Business Central implementation project.
“We did not get good service or rather best put, competent service. We had lots of issues in terms of not only configuration issues but also in respect to training. … We really weren’t learning anything,” he said.
The consulting partner spent little time attempting to understand Zing Health’s needs before beginning the implementation. As the project continued, there was a noticeable lack of communication and little explanation on how the software was being implemented. Zing Health was technically live within one month of purchasing Business Central, but Sahin said the configuration was not yet complete and his team still had many unanswered questions.
“We went live Nov. 1, and I was already getting a sense that this wasn’t going well,” he said.
Solution: New partner stabilizes cloud ERP
Frustrated with the lack of communication and training, Sahin started to look for a new Dynamics 365 Business Central partner. He discovered Boyer on a website search and reached out to the Microsoft gold-certified partner in hopes that they could better answer the questions and solve the issues his team had.
“The first thing I appreciated was that Boyer jumped on this right away, understanding that we were in desperate need,” Sahin said.
Boyer’s first task, according to Sahin, “was really to stop the bleeding.” The Boyer team worked fast to fix the existing configuration issues so that Zing Health could begin using the system with minimal issues. Once the most critical issues were fixed, training began in earnest.
“As we stabilized the situation the next step was to learn the system better. We kept having more and more questions come up as we started to use the system,” Sahin said.
He said the Boyer team was able to answer those questions knowledgeably as well as document the processes. This gave the Zing Health team confidence that they were using the system properly.
Benefits of Business Central
Zing Health currently has General Ledger and Accounts Payable implemented. The Boyer team also helped the company design actionable reports, add security measures and document workflows. Implementation of a Fixed Assets module for Dynamics 365 Business Central is planned for the near future.
“We’re in graduate school now really doing the stuff to make it more tight of a system and getting the best value out of what we’ve implemented,” Sahin said. He said it’s as though they went from the basement of a building to the 10th floor in a few short months.
Sahin said he appreciates Boyer’s competence, eagerness to help and availability. “It was night and day in terms of experience,” he added.
As he and his team learn more about the new system, he’s also beginning to appreciate the capabilities available within Business Central compared to QuickBooks.
For example, eligible personnel can now access the system on their phones to approve invoices while at the same time security measures are in place to prevent others from accessing sensitive information. Getting information to and from the bank is also a more streamlined process now.
“It’s more automated and seamless and less paperwork,” Sahin said.
Overall, he’s glad they made the decision to switch partners, a process he likened to a divorce and remarriage. He said the decision was both difficult because they were already in the middle of an implementation with another Business Central partner and yet also easy because they were getting nowhere.
“When you’re trying to go as fast as you can and you’ve got 200 other things to do, for Boyer to make that more seamless for us was very valuable,” Sahin said.
