Blue Marine Foundation is on a mission to save the oceans, but its finance and reporting system couldn’t keep up with its growth. The foundation implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central for automatic, current reporting that gives project managers the information they need to act swiftly for its environmental causes.
Protecting the Earth’s big blue
From implementing plans for protected areas to managing the adoption of less harmful fishing gear, Blue Marine Foundation has helped protect the ocean since 2010. The foundation works with communities, other nonprofit conservation organizations, and governments to deliver marine conservation and restoration solutions, with a goal of ensuring the effective protection of at least 30% of the ocean by 2030. Its detailed finance and reporting system combined with a small workforce provides Blue Marine Foundation a crucial advantage over larger, legacy organizations: the agility and ability to act quickly with its funding. The organization takes pride in investing purposefully to keep overheads at a minimum and ensure as much funding as possible goes toward delivering strategic objectives.
Take the Flapper Skate, one of the world’s largest skate species facing an extremely high risk of extinction. A Blue Marine project manager received news that a recreational diver had discovered a Flapper Skate egg case off the northwest coast of Scotland.
An egg case can take almost 18 months to hatch, making them vulnerable to capture or damage from bottom trawl fishing. Responding quickly to the opportunity, the project manager immediately sent out a team of divers to capture valuable footage. With proof of more than 100 rare egg cases, Blue Marine successfully convinced the Scottish government to ban trawling and dredging in the area, allowing critically endangered Flapper Skate egg cases to hatch and protecting generations to come.
Complex and error-prone entries
Budgets are crucial to any organization, but nonprofit charities are especially sensitive to proper financial reporting. ”Projects are constantly challenged by political, economic, social, and legal changes that require us to react quickly to keep project goals on track,” says Lynne Smith, Director of Finance, Operations and Governance at Blue Marine Foundation. And the foundation has restricted funding, meaning that money is donated for specific activities that must be agreed upon by the funder. Having out-of-date financial information can leave project managers in the dark about the funding available and what they can do with it.
In 2018, Blue Marine had a 15-person staff with a single in-house finance team member.
The entire foundation relied on an accounting software solution alongside a self-developed management information flow through Microsoft Excel. Back then, the foundation was overseeing expenditure on around 20 projects and the system successfully provided valuable insights to colleagues. But by the end of 2021, as the number of projects increased, producing budget files for nearly 40 separate projects took almost two weeks every month, leading to complex and error-prone entries.
To improve the system, Blue Marine shifted some budgets from monthly reporting to quarterly reporting. “That solution wasn’t ideal for our fast-paced operations,” says Smith “We needed to provide quick responses to urgent and time-sensitive conservation opportunities.” Even with an assistant accountant, the finance team couldn’t focus on value-added work or provide outward-facing support, and the lack of current information exposed the organization to more risk in the decision-making process during time-sensitive situations, like the Skate case.
Finding a scalable solution
Blue Marine realized the need for a solution that could scale to handle more data and projects. “We knew it was time to invest in ourselves to get ahead of growth,” says Smith. “We wanted a business management solution that was fit for the medium-sized organization we were quickly becoming.” The company originally considered hiring more people to manage the workload but wanted to stay agile, preferring to focus on automation and integration of its systems.
After gathering recommendations and completing a feasibility study across several systems and suppliers, Blue Marine chose City Dynamics as its implementation partner. City Dynamics is a London-based software development company that enables professional organizations and financial institutions to grow and thrive with Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central. “The team was genuinely interested in our mission and were always very happy to come to our offices for in-person meetings, which we really valued,” says Smith. In less than a year, City Dynamics helped Blue Foundation go live with Dynamics 365 Business Central within their ambitious time frame, eliminating the need for two systems to run concurrently.
An award-winning digital transformation
Dynamics 365 Business Central is an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that centralizes data, streamlines, operations, and enhances decision making across organizations. Business Central has provided Blue Marine with a business management solution featuring a robust means of tracking its three vital dimensions—project, funder, and budget lines—for transactional data.
Additionally, it fulfilled the need for automated integration with other systems to remove inconsistencies between teams and duplication of work. “The connection between Business Central and Microsoft 365 were crucial to the project’s success,” says Smith. “Project managers interact with their budgets within Microsoft Teams, rather than having to log onto yet another different system, which has undoubtedly improved the end user experience and engagement.” It has also provided a reporting system with a standardized budget that updates automatically with accurate, current, and relevant information for every project manager whenever required.
Blue Marine also implemented Power BI so it can examine data—from organization data to individual project budgets—at the click of a button. Power BI is an interactive data visualization software that converts data into coherent, visually immersive, and interactive insights. Its Project Budget reporting pack provides an evolving suite of reports for internal stakeholders—from the fundraising team to an automated dashboard providing the highest level of information to the board of trustees.
“The adoption of Business Central and Power BI significantly improved our operational efficiency and decision-making processes,” says Smith. Previously, it took the finance team two weeks each month to prepare reports and some transactions would be almost six weeks old by the time project managers received the budget update. Now, the system automatically produces reports and most transactional data is in reports within a week of the transaction taking place, allowing the finance team to focus on value-added work. “The implementation costs for Business Central and Power BI were recouped within one year due to the time saved,” says Smith.
Additionally, Blue Marine Foundation and City Dynamics won 2023 Transformation Project of the Year at the ERP Today awards. Smith says, “Winning Transformation Project of the Year has cemented our reputation for having good financial management. Donors know they can trust us with their money and trust that we will spend it as effectively as possible.”
Blue waters and Azure skies
The implementation has allowed Blue Marine Foundation to react to unexpected opportunities with confidence. When the President of the Dominican Republic announced his commitment to protect 30% of its ocean territory by 2030, Blue Marine and other organizations were ready to support his mission. After meeting with partners, the foundation decided to embark on an expedition to gather evidence as soon as possible, but it required almost immediate funding to secure the only available and suitable boat in the region for its dates.
With Business Central, project managers could see the live balance within a longstanding fund from a donor and could reallocate the budget to the request. Blue Marine and its partners were able to complete the expedition on time, and this contributed to the official designation of a new 30% Marine Protected Area (MPA) with the Dominican Republic.
Overall, the solution has empowered project managers and improved efficiency and access to accurate budget information to set the foundation apart from larger organizations that may struggle to react swiftly. Blue Marine hopes to further develop and scale Business Central. The team is currently trialing Copilot for further automation and looks forward to implementing AI support on bank reconciliations as soon as it's available. Smith adds,
“Blue Marine has a big ambition and a big problem to tackle. Business Central and Power BI will continue to provide the best possible support to the organization and our partners.”
Lynne Smith: Director of Finance, Operations and Governance
Blue Marine Foundation