Red Cross signs TechnologyOne for enterprise software rollout

The Australian Red Cross has selected TechnologyOne to roll out new enterprise software in a contract worth AU$3 million.

The non-profit organisation is undergoing a consolidation of business systems as part of its One Red Cross program, which began seven years ago to improve fundraising. The new software deal will contribute to this, with the deployment marking one of the most significant change-management projects that the organisation has ever engaged in.

The Red Cross is adopting the core components of the software provider's OneCommunity preconfigured offering as a replacement to a complex web of Epicor systems, Microsoft Access databases, and Excel spreadsheets.

"We have already made significant progress, but the infrastructure needs to catch up — we still have disparate legacy systems and Excel spreadsheets band-aided and stitched together," Australian Red Cross acting CEO Sanday Chakravarty said in a statement. "The new platform will give a single version of the truth, and be an effective decision-making tool."

The organisation will take on various parts of OneCommunity that deal with a number of functions, including financials, supply chain, and enterprise budgeting, over the next two and a half years.

The biggest change will be to the existing point-of-sale system, which will help the Red Cross track inventory and payments across the organisation's 182 charity stores.

Consolidation of different databases will also help the Red Cross understand its staff, members, blood donors, and humanitarian givers.

"Over the last two years, we mapped, analysed, and harmonised all business processes and extracted our business requirements before deciding the organisation was ready for some robust enterprise software systems," Chakravarty said.

TechnologyOne was selected after competing with five other software vendors in a tender process.

It was picked because its offering satisfied the Red Cross' requirements, including minimal customisation and a streamlined platform that will reduce operational expenditure.

Australian Red Cross has over 2,500 employees and around 35,000 volunteers across the country.