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How We Can Help

What presents the biggest challenges to you or to your company? Click on the market that best applies to your industry. Check the box next to each applicable challenge to learn how Metaphor Software can help resolve your source of stress.

You will see a synopsis of how we can help as each checkbox is selected. Press the 'submit' button at the bottom of the page to continue to a form. Please fill out this form and submit it. We will contact you as soon as possible to help you with your challenges.

Not For Profit

Government

Education

Distribution/Manufacturing

Partner Channel

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Not For Profit

Attracting funds is more difficult in today’s economy.

Maximize your donor potential with FUNDraiser 2008. Collect and leverage a rich set of donor data for more effective & efficient fundraising generation:

Record extensive donor demographics, interests & preferences
Use tools provided to mine the database
Develop and automate targeted marketing campaigns
Increase personal touch points with donors
Automate follow-ups

We are currently spending too much time re-entering data from our Fundraising system to our ERP and accounting systems.

FUNDraiser 2008 provides a single comprehensive package that addresses all aspects of contact, donation, campaign and event management that includes built-in integration to an ERP system.

Our current fundraising system is rigid and can’t easily conform to our unique or changing business needs.

FUNDraiser 2008 gives your organization flexibility and a solution that will grow with you and your not for profit organization. FUNDraiser 2008 allows for:

Quickly and easily adding additional data fields to contacts, organizations, campaigns, events, orders, donations and other screens in the system.
Support for new fundraising initiatives like the web, event management and the sale of apparel and other items.
And more!

We are spending too much time scheduling, coordinating and implementing our marketing campaigns.

FUNDraiser 2008 can reduce the time you are spending on marketing by giving you tools to maximize your employee’s time and efforts:

Use intelligent list and segmentation features to reach prospective donors, retain existing donors, and transform successful campaigns into templates that can easily be re-used.
Utilize integration with email system and MS Word mail merge to reduce manual activities.
Automate and coordinate all aspects of a multi-step campaign.
Choose activities for a campaign, such as e-mail messages, phone calls, faxes, or meetings, and assign them to the appropriate people.

We have no way to do any donor or marketing campaign analysis to help us know what is and what is not working or forecast incoming donations.

With FUNDraiser 2008 you have the tools right at your fingertips to analyze the data you've entered into the system:

Reporting and analysis features to evaluate the performance of your print, e-mail, online, and other marketing efforts.
Generate detailed, real-time performance reports that track key performance factors including return on investment, response rates, and cost per response.
Create insightful and focused dashboards for executives and top constituents that adeptly highlight key marketing metrics and performance indicators and drive home the value of individual or group marketing programs.

Our current fundraising system does not help us manage events or activities.

FUNDraiser 2008 provides robust event management capabilities.

Manage the event registration process.
Manage all of the activities that come together to create an event.
Performs attendee management (seating arrangements, scheduling activities, etc)
Link events to marketing campaigns for a more impactful ROI analysis.

We raise money by selling goods (books, DVD's, clothing, etc.). Our call center personnel does not have any visibility into product availability & estimated delivery dates when taking orders.

Metaphor Software’s FUNDraiser 2008 provides a single comprehensive package that seamlessly integrates constituent management, donation / order management, inventory and production.

Our fundraising system is completely separate form our back end accounting system, which results in inefficiencies and introduces errors into our processes.

FUNDamentals 2008 and FUNDraiser 2008 provide Not for Profit’s with a tightly integrated front-end, constituent-centric solution with back-end support systems including financials, real-time website ordering, inventory availability shipment tracking and more.

We are unable to manually keep funds in balance and maintain multiple fund balance accounts and our current system does not have support for funds-based accounting.

Keeping your funds in balance in multiple accounts is a standard capability of FUNDamentals 2008. All system modules force the balancing of funds through the automatic creation of "Due To" and "Due From" transactions.

We need an efficient way to administer and report on encumbered funds.

FUNDamentals 2008 provides the capability to reserve budget for planned expenditures and financial commitments. FUNDamentals 2008 automatically factors encumbrances and verifies your available budget prior to making a purchase.

We have too many separate spreadsheets and manual processes to support complex distributions and financial statement creation for all the programs we administer.

FUNDamentals 2008 includes a financial report writer that will handle the complex reporting requirements. All modules allow the creation of multiple general ledger distributions.

We need a date-based transactional system to permit cross-fiscal period reporting and processing.

FUNDamentals 2008 allows all funds to have a separate functional calendar.

We do not have the ability to manage inventory and the distribution of materials (such as books, CD’s, and apparel).

FUNDamentals 2008 includes robust inventory management and production management functionality. It leverages the powerful ERP capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics AX.

Auditors find it difficult to verify the accuracy of financial statements. We need to maintain a clear audit trail.

FUNDamentals 2008 enables a user to view summary transactions and then drill down to view the base transactions. It provides a clear audit trail from commitment to final check, from billing record to final receipt.

Government

We are currently unable to report financial performance on both an accrual and cash basis.

The FUNDamentals 2008 solution supports both cash-based and accrual-based accounting and reporting.

Currently, we are unable to effectively track capital projects.

FUNDamentals 2008 includes a complete Project Accounting module. You can set up projects, estimate project costs, use projects to generate quotations, and track project process. This solution provides your government sector one source for all project tracking.

Our budgetary control is after-the-fact versus pro-active. This leads to challenges in reallocating funding and potential audit risks.

In FUNDamentals 2008, budgetary control is done at the purchase order level. The system allows two types of warnings:
1) Warning at a percent of budget level.
2) Error out at a percent of budget level.

We need an integrated Financial and ERP solution that supports GASB 34.

FUNDamentals 2008 integrates a robust fund accounting solution with the ERP capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics^TM AX, and complies with GASB 34 requirements.

We have too many separate spreadsheets and manual processes to support complex distributions and the creation of financial statements for all the programs we administer.

In FUNDamentals 2008 the financial report writer feature will handle your complex reporting requirements. All modules allow the creation of multiple general ledger distributions to allow reporting for separate programs from the same system.

We have disparate systems that are causing inefficiencies and errors because of our reliance on manual tasks.

FUNDamentals 2008 is a fully integrated fund accounting and ERP solution. It eliminates redundant efforts and errors that otherwise result from having disparate systems.

Auditors find it difficult to verify the accuracy of financial statements.

Education

The Master Scheduling process requires too much time and too many revisions.

Backpack 2008 minimizes the time and effort required to develop your master schedule. The key behind Backpack 2008 is that it captures and includes all of data elements that factor into a master schedule and combines this information with a state of the art scheduling engine.

Meeting the requirements for state and district reporting is very time consuming.

The Backpack 2008 system allows you to capture all of your state required data elements. Based upon your state's IT capabilities Metaphor Software can either send the information electronically or generate intermediate reports that match the formats for manually keying the data into the state system.

Our Teachers and other staff members are limited because they do not have easy access to ALL of the information they need.

Backpack 2008 allows access to all necessary student information and keeps it in one place. We understand that when meeting with students or parents the teachers, staff, and administrators need a 360-degree view of the student – grades, attendance, behavior, transcript, recent contacts made by other staff members, etc. All of this information is provided in an intuitive interface with minimal mouse clicks.

Currently we have many disparate systems causing decreased efficiencies.

Backpack 2008 has been developed as a holistic SIS system:

It allows data entry into one module, which is automatically accessible by other modules. There are security controls that monitor which users can see specific data sets.
It contains a centralized database.
There is a common user interface across the application.
It provides a 360-degree view of data by role and by function.

Our current Student Information System is too hard to use.

Backpack 2008 solution contains an interface that is intuitive and familiar to most users, making it easier to teach and learn. It also contains QuickViews that provide users with a role-based dashboard with relevant, up-to-the-minute information with the option to drill down to view more data at the click of a mouse.

Our district needs to disseminate information to students and parents.

Backpack 2008 provides a fully-integrated student and parent/guardian portal. All content is managed and published using the Backpack 2008 system because the portal leverages the data that is already in the Student Information System. An administrator simply configures which information to display in the portal and who will have access to the information.

We are currently having difficulty conducting effective analysis on assessment test results.

Backpack 2008 allows you to import standardized assessment test results directly into the system for further analysis and sharing with the appropriate staff. You can also define "local assessment" tests and perform the same types of analysis as on standardized tests.

We are a private school and in these economic times attracting funds is more difficult than ever.

Maximize your donor potential with FUNDraiser 2008

Collect more information on your donors and utilize our analysis tools to drive targeted marketing campaigns.
Increase personal touch points with donors using automated follow-ups and targeted activities.

Create and automate multi-step marketing campaigns

Automate and coordinate all aspects of a multi-step campaign.
Choose activities for a campaign, such as e-mail messages, phone calls, events and meetings, and assign them to appropriate people.
Evaluate the performance of your print, e-mail, online, and other marketing efforts.
Generate detailed, real-time performance reports that track key performance factors including response rates, return on investment, and cost per response.

Distribution/Manufacturing

We need to implement a robust ERP solution at a reasonable cost.

Microsoft Dynamics^TM AX is an adaptable business management solution. It provides more robust capabilities than competitively priced Business Management Solutions. Metaphor Software has deep knowledge of the Microsoft Dynamics^TM AX solution and a strong track record for implementing solutions on-time and within budget.

We are looking for a single, trustworthy, vendor/partner that has extensive ERP implementation experience.

The staff at Metaphor Software has over 15 years of ERP implementation experience. Metaphor Software will be your partner for your ERP implementation and support; working closely with you every step of the way. At Metaphor Software customer referenceability is a company priority. We go above and beyond to address the needs of our clients. Please read the quotes from our user success stories.

A basic system will not fulfill all of our company’s ERP requirements. We need to work with an innovative implementation partner who can customize the system to meet our unique needs.

Custom development work is a core strength of Metaphor Software. Metaphor Software will leverage the out-of-the-box capabilities of Microsoft Dynamics^TM AX and CRM, but additionally will extend the capabilities to meet your unique business needs.

Partner Channel

We need Microsoft Dynamics^TM AX functional or technical resources for a current project.

Metaphor Software is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. We employ certified AX and CRM consultants, who have a wealth of project experience. Our consultants can assist with any current or future projects you may have to make your life easier.

We need Microsoft Dynamics^TM CRM functional or technical resources for a current project.

We need a scalable ERP solution to support our public sector clients. The current solutions do not provide fund accounting capabilities.

FUNDamentals 2008 makes Microsoft Dynamics^TM AX "fund-aware". FUNDamentals 2008 is a fund-based accounting system that tracks restriction-based transactions in compliance with the GASB and FASB rules.

Our large commercial clients need a business unit accounting capability. We realize that the dimension feature in Microsoft Dynamics^TM AX will not support this requirement.

FUNDamentals 2008 enables a company to process transactions across business units. In addition to handling inter-unit transactions, FUNDamentals 2008 will provide both individual business unit and consolidated financials.

Our Microsoft Dynamics^TM AX clients are asking for dashboard capabilities and AX 2009 still does not provide us with the capabilities we need.

Metaphor Software's SmartBoardAX provides role-based dashboards that contain direct links to key performance indicators, analytics, notifications, and quick-action links to key reports and screens. SmartBoardAX works with both Dynamics AX v4.0 and v5.0.

Please call Metaphor Sales at +1 630.534.5240 to further discuss your challenges and what solutions we can provide. You can also submit this form, fill out the following contact form and we will contact you as soon as possible with solutions to your selected challenges.