1. Special Olympics – Prophix story
Operating since: 1968
Head office: Washington, D.C.
Annual revenue: $118 million (2012)
Number of employees: 200
G/L or ERP: Microsoft Dynamics NAV
Company website:
Company background:
Special Olympics transforms lives through the joy of sport, every day, everywhere, as the world’s largest sports organization for people with intellectual disabilities: with 4.4 million athletes in 170 countries -- and millions more volunteers and supporters. Special Olympics is also a global social movement.
What are the company’s main sources of revenue?
“Awards”: grants, donations from corporations and individuals (effectively like sponsorships)
What are the company’s largest expenses? Event costs (locally and internationally), project expenses, personnel, general and administrative expenses

2. Special Olympics – Prophix story
How did the customer hear about Prophix?
Google search. Researched us via the Gartner Magic Quadrant.
Which other CPM vendors did the customer evaluate?
IBM Cognos, who were their existing CPM software providers.
The Special Olympics had to renew their licenses with IBM. They evaluated re-implementation and found that the cost would be equivalent to a new implementation ($70k in services to re-implement their business modeling). They faced license costs as well. They also had an IT FTE on the books to support Cognos for $100k.
The RFP that Special Olympics issued focused on Cognos services, so they issued it to Cognos implementation partners as well.
What were the customer’s primary reasons for selecting Prophix?
They recognized Prophix as a business-owned application, so they could eliminate their Cognos-specific IT expense.
Prophix offered seamless Microsoft Dynamics NAV integration.
Breadth of capabilities stood out for them.
Needed to conduct complex personnel cost allocations (across departments, projects, and awards (aka sponsors/donors)), and a reference call with Crystal & Company met this need.
Business problems that led to evaluating CPM, adopting Prophix:
Needed to allocate personnel (staff) costs across departments and projects, linking this back to restricted funds (funds donated for a specific purpose). This would allow them to explain to donors and regulators where their donation money is going. The Special Olympics could also track and analyze where the money is spent. This leads to more accurate budgeting and forecasting.
P&L planning, financial reporting, balance sheet and cash flow planning. $95k spend meant that we needed to stay close to the project budget, so cash flow planning came in the second phase.
Needed revenue and sales planning, with data coming from salesforce (not via integration). This would hone in on each project’s likelihood of closing, tied to the associated amounts (and with audit trails tracked in Prophix).

3. Life cycle and industry:
Prophix life cycle
☐ New implementation YES
Implementation date: Q4 2014
☐ Preexisting customer
Original implementation date: ________________
☐ Existing customer, upgrading
Industry (choose all that apply)
☐ Agriculture, forestry, and fishing
☐ Professional services
☐ Financial services
☐ Retail
☐ Wholesale and distribution
☐ Telecommunications
☐ Healthcare
☐ Utilities
☐ Education
☐ Architecture, engineering, and construction
☐ Life science
☐ Transportation and logistics
☐ Manufacturing
☐ High tech
☐ Media and entertainment YES
☐ Government
☐ Non-profit YES

4. Special Olympics – Prophix story
How has using software from Prophix helped to address the customer’s business challenges (specific to their industry)? Relate this functionality to the capabilities on slide 5.
Budgeting: during implementation, Special Olympics hosted finance employees from all of their local offices in international locations. Monica Szewczyk taught them how to build their new templates and work with the simplified workflow. In the past, they all had varying Excel spreadsheets/tabs to send to head office. During training they learned about using Prophix for their new streamlined and automated process, which would accept their inputs and feed back into the larger budget. By tying their expenses to specific awards, projects, or departments (listed in their configured drop-down menus), they would now be accountable for the expenses they would submit against revenues.
Reporting: Special Olympics uses Report Binder to output and package reports for their executives (as well as their board of directors?). The organization faces different requirements for reporting to government regulators and GAAP reports for auditors. They use Prophix’s alternate hierarchies function to flexibly output into these different formats.
Data integration and investigation: Prophix integrates Microsoft Dynamics NAV and with Special Olympics’ Concur (SAP) expense management system. Budgeting users can view actuals from Concur in Prophix and see the transactional breakdown of expenses, clicking into areas that interest them to view the details. For example, (1) they could view historical details of travel expenses to understand how much money they might require for a given project. (2) They could review advertising expenses which may align with future requirements for a project.

5. Special Olympics – Prophix story
How has using software from Prophix helped to address the customer’s business challenges (specific to their industry)? Relate this functionality to the capabilities on slide 5.
Is the customer aware of the Prophix Rewards program?
On a scale of 0 to 10, how likely is the customer to recommend Prophix to others?
Future plans:

6. Capabilities at a glance:
☐ Budgeting YES
☐ Forecasting YES
☐ Reporting YES
☐ Strategic planning
☐ Financial consolidation (w/ multiple entities)
☐ Profitability analysis
☐ Personnel planning YES
☐ Utilization planning
☐ Project planning YES
☐ Revenue planning YES
☐ Capital expenditures planning
☐ Cash flow planning YES
☐ Dashboards and scorecards
☐ Prophix Mobile
☐ Microsoft platform integration YES
☐ Cloud deployment