Many of us have a tired boiler hidden away in our home – sometimes the house isn’t quite warm enough and we are conscious that we really ought to get it serviced more regularly; we also have a niggling feeling that it’s not very efficient or cost-effective, but we know that little short of catastrophic failure will lead to us actually doing anything about it. In the same way, many mid-sized businesses have a niggling feeling that their finance processes and systems could be improved, but with other priorities vying for their attention they let the old systems wheeze on for the time being and never quite get round to exploring the alternatives.According to our research, over 60% of people working in finance recognise that they need to improve their financial processes. At the same time, nearly 30% of end users believe that the data they receive is inaccurate, making it difficult to use data effectively in their roles. And these are just the problems that people are aware of.

It’s all too easy to take the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it ‘ approach to finance yet the cost and revenue implications of closing the gap between best practice and today’s creaky old system can be significant. Streamlined automated processes mean a lower headcount and the opportunity to grow revenue without growing the finance department, an opportunity to stem revenue leakage, and the chance to save the time and energy currently devoted to creating parallel records and analysis in other parts of the business. But perhaps most importantly, trusted data and analysis can be the catalyst to data-driven decisions, allowing your top managers to make the right calls so that the business can grow and survive in the future.

So perhaps it’s worth making that niggle a priority after all. Let’s put it this way: if you discovered that the boiler wouldn’t just heat the house, it could also make the kids’ dinner, read them a bed time story and pour you a glass of wine; just how much of the next five minutes would it take you to start exploring your options?

If you’d like to receive a copy of our full report, to be published at the beginning of May, please contact Liz Mcdonnell

Rachel Ainsworth is Senior Research Manager at Source. Rachel works with individual consulting firms to develop bespoke thought leadership and offers insight on thought leadership across the industry. She is particularly interested in consulting firms’ use of social and digital media. Prior to joining Source, Rachel has had over 10 years’ experience as a management consultant, managing both strategic and operational projects across a variety of sectors. She holds an engineering degree from Oxford University and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Boilers and finance departments – what do they have in common? is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment

CloudStore, the G-Cloud’s online app store is already changing the way public sector organisations procure services. It’s made the process faster, more cost-effective and more transparent.

Employees who visit the online store are able to choose from a catalogue of cherry-picked cloud providers and services. They can also view key product information and compare suppliers so they can confidently procure IT services and solutions, which best fit their needs. There’s an impressive directory to choose from which features over 1,700 IT products/services available to the public sector.

There’s also a bit more good news… After a rigorous application process and review of our ERP On Demand solutions, Advanced has been granted approved CloudStore supplier status through our partnership with Bramble.cc.

Advanced has more than 20 years’ experience providing the public sector with expert advice and solutions. Our new listing provides the ideal platform to further extend our service offering to the public sector, allowing the procurement of our Government endorsed ERP On Demand solutions via the G-Cloud.

All products and services listed on the G-Cloud framework are available to anyone in the public sector and are delivered across four areas including: Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service, Software as a Service and specialist cloud services.

For those of you who haven’t already discovered the G-Cloud, it’s worth a look. It allows you to compare suppliers and products but the real asset is being able to shop for things as and when you need them, saving you costs. Happy shopping!

For further information on the G-Cloud and the CloudStore

G-Cloud http://gcloud.civilservice.gov.uk/

CloudStore http://www.govstore.net/

Check out Advanced on the CloudStore is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment

The survey, which attracted participation from 142 different UK charities, highlights our commitment to our not-for-profit customers, all of whom recommended us as a leading accounting software supplier.

Our OpenAccounts finance system was praised by end-users for its compatibility with charity accounting systems, overall functionality, web enablement and ease of use.

This achievement is testament to the importance we place on remaining close to our customers through understanding their needs and providing the right solutions to fulfil their not-for-profit requirements.

It’s so rewarding to receive such a resounding seal of approval and to be assured that putting customers at the centre of our business is working.

Advanced gets seal of approval from charity sector is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment

The Eurozone is fighting for survival, capitalism has been forced on to the back foot and some indicators even suggest fast-growing economies, such as China, are starting to see the pace of economic development slow. Merry Christmas, and look forward to more doom and gloom in 2012!

Except it doesn’t have to be like that. Businesses have to cut their cloth accordingly but constrained economic conditions shouldn’t mean you have to turn down every opportunity to invest. In fact, smart business leaders are already thinking about new spending priorities.

Technology will play a crucial role in helping the business to find a competitive advantage in trying circumstances. IT leaders must show c-suite leaders that they are right to think that technology now, more than ever before, is a sensible investment.

After all, research from Warwick Business School suggests that two-thirds of chief executives still believe IT will make a greater contribution to their industry in the next 10 years than in any prior decade (see further reading, below). The boss, then, should be receptive to your IT investment ideas.

Analyst, Gartner, reports that companies will spend $2.7bn on IT products and services in 2012, which represents a 3.9% increase on the current year (see further reading). Look for projects that can automate processes, promote efficient ways of working and demonstrate a quick return on investment.

Your priorities should include budgeting and forecasting systems and business analytics solutions. Modern businesses are drowning in structured and unstructured data. Analytical tools are the key to unlocking smarter business decisions, with analyst Ovum suggesting that 50% of IT leaders plan to spend on big data analytics in the coming years (see further reading).

CIOs should also use 2012 to investigate opportunities for outsourcing IT to managed services or cloud computing providers. External and on-demand provision can create significant cost and efficiency savings, with researcher IDC expecting about 80% of new software offerings to be available as cloud services by 2014 (see further reading).

Spending big on new areas might seem risky at a time on economic uncertainty. However the senior IT executive that fails to spot smart investment opportunities will be left out in the cold.

Further reading:

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/6ce0a9e0-1c79-11e1-af09-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1gbG4qfeh

http://searchbusinessintelligence.techtarget.in/news/2240106993/IT-spending-on-big-data-analytics-to-get-a-boost-in-2012-13-Report

http://www.zacks.com/stock/news/65727/Cloud+Computing+Rivalry+Heats+Up

Don’t be a Scrooge when it comes to 2012 IT investment is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment

These developments have paved the way for a huge surge in demand in 2011. The payments arm of eBay is already logging up to $10m in mobile payments a day and projects it will receive $3bn in mobile-payment transactions by the end of the financial year, up from an earlier estimate of $1.5bn.

The number of payments will increase further as more electronic retailers, restaurants, fast food outlets and even supermarkets join in. Payments via mobile devices are forecast to take off over the next three years, with analyst Jupiter Research predicting that global transactions will double in value to $50bn by 2014.

Consumer spending is not the only area that is likely to be transformed by NFC technology. Innovative technology suppliers are investigating how NFC technology can provide an efficiency boost in areas of service delivery.

Take IT specialist – and ABS’s sister company – Advanced Health & Care, which is already experiencing a huge rise in demand for its mobile workforce solution iConnect. The NFC-based system allows remote healthcare workers to better manage service user visits through the provision of real-time communication between care workers and support staff.

On arrival and departure, care workers touch their mobile phone against a small RFID tag in the service user’s home. The secure and unobtrusive approach improves the quality of management information, delivering live schedules to care workers and verifiable arrival departure times to the office.

The efficiency benefits of iConnect are huge, typically creating savings of over 20 per cent through the elimination of paper-based processes. If all 111,700 local authority care workers achieved a similar efficiency gain, an extra 34.4 million visits could be made each year.

With retailers across the UK already preparing to allow consumers to pay via NFC-enabled phones, other organisations in other sectors will have to follow suit as consumers become used to this new form of interaction. Beat your competition and start exploring now.

Further reading

http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Mobile-and-Wireless/Google-PayPal-See-NFC-Mobile-Payment-Boom-574060/

http://www.silicon.com/technology/mobile/2011/06/08/wave-goodbye-to-the-wallet-nfc-payments-to-reach-50bn-by-2014-39747511/

The rebirth of NFC technology is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment

Far too many companies still process foreign currency payments manually. It is a time consuming and expensive form of data entry. Worse, this unnecessary intervention can be avoided through the implementation of smart technology.

Manual processing relies on individuals using their own brains and brawn to deal with banking currency payments. Such a reliance on human hands can lead to needless errors in data entry that create accounting problems further down the line.

Spotting such errors, however, can also be complicated. Human processes are not automatically tracked and, without the right types of technical reporting standards, errors can be replicated and can go unreported. The result can be an expensive manual mess.

To eliminate the unnecessary time and cost concerns related to manual processing, organisations should look to integrate payments technology into their financial management systems. Integrating the right type of technology provides a fast, efficient and cost-effective way to make and receive payments.

The main benefit is to break the reliance on brains and brawn. Automated currency processing reduces the need for manual data entry and increases the ability for organisations to automate their payment methods.

The right form of integration will enable straight through processing of payment files. Such processing provides improved control and visibility, allowing key executives to carefully monitor the entire payments process.

Automated systems create a means for multiple payments to be uploaded and sent at the same time. And once payments are complete, accurate files are updated and instantly available for finance staff.

Smooth integration, such as that provided by Advanced Business Solutions’ recently announced partnership with Travelex Global Business Payments, will make automation a painless end point. As Travelex are the only non-bank foreign currency provider they can therefore offer more competitive rates than the high street.

The result is faster processes, less errors and decreased costs.

See for yourself using their online payment health-check  http://www.travelexbusiness.com/uk/payment-health-check/ . Suddenly, good quality currency processing does not seem like such a foreign business objective.

Automate foreign currency payments: and save money? is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment

Unfortunately, for many businesses, this isn’t the case. A survey carried out by Advanced Business Solutions’ sister company, Version One, highlighted that over half of senior finance professionals in the UK have experienced disruption to their processes as a result of bad weather.

Anyone in business will tell you that the one thing you need to be certain of is cashflow. It doesn’t matter how many invoices you send out if the Royal Mail van carrying them is stuck in snow. Even worse, that same van may be carrying the cheques that customers are sending to you.

Similarly, if you’re not able to pay your suppliers on time this may affect your relationship with them going forward and could eventually lead to you being issued with late payment penalties.

An easy way to avoid all of this unnecessary stress is to remove paper from your processes. For example, utilising document management technology to create, approve and send invoices electronically means that you no longer have to be reliant on the postman, and, as they’re delivered to your customers almost immediately, the order-to-cash process speeds up dramatically.

As paper is so easily lost, damaged and destroyed, this raises important security, compliance and business continuity concerns. Document management systems provide the electronic and secure indexing, storage and retrieval of documents. Really effective ones also allow the electronic creation, automated delivery and electronic authorisation of documents so that the need to print, photocopy, post and file paper is eliminated – along with the considerable costs that accompany these time-consuming manual processes.

Having all of your documents stored electronically also means that they are backed up in a secure archive and can be retrieved in seconds. When you’re sitting in a warm, dry office this doesn’t seem too important. When you’re standing in a waterlogged office, staring at the soggy remains of the last three years’ invoices it’s a completely different matter.

Recent floods have shown how easy it is for adverse weather to ruin businesses and lives. An electronic document management system will not only help avoid disruption to your finance processes, but can play a vital role in preventing your business from becoming a statistic should the weather turn against you.

Could your Christmas dream turn into a New Year nightmare? is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment

Take this year as a starting point. The projected amount of digital information created in 2010 will be 1.2 million zettabytes which is equivalent to a full-length episode of TV series “24″ running continuously for 125 million years, according to research from IDC and EMC (see further reading, below).

Such figures are amusing but almost impossible to fully comprehend. And without the means to track, trace and interpret information, the results of such an information explosion for your business could be tremendous.

Gartner’s report concludes that, with the proliferation of mobile devices, collaborative technologies and social media, the quantity and variety of digital data will continue to grow. While managing this information is a challenge, it also presents a remarkable opportunity.

By putting the right foundations in place for managing and analysing your data, your organisation will be more able to make data-driven decisions moving forward.

Business intelligence, for example, can pull together an organisation’s data to provide a single version of the truth, allowing executives to make timely decisions based upon a consistent view of data from across the organisation.

Other corporate performance management tools, such as forecasting and planning software, also help organisations to work smarter whilst aiding decision making. With forecasting and planning, for instance, organisations can plan and model scenarios before making data-driven decisions.

The fast pace of IT development means that the number of data sources is only likely to increase and so it’s key to leverage this data for the benefit of the organisation. Ultimately, successful analytics is about creating an effective partnership between IT and the business; make sure you have the right tools in place to make this happen.

Further reading:
http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/press-releases/gartners-2010-hype-cycle-special-report-evaluates-maturity-1-800-technologies

http://www.securityweek.com/content/emc-digital-universe-data-growth-study-projects-nearly-45-fold-annual-data-growth-2020

Enabling data-driven decisions is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment

You no doubt recognise the importance of loving your customers and you probably look after your staff, but what about your suppliers? Do you consider your supplier to be a partner and why does the relationship with external providers matter?

The increasing reliance on external service provision means that the bond you establish with your supplier is paramount. The modern business is a multi-sourcer that buys technology and services on-demand to fulfil a fast-changing series of business requirements. Under such circumstances, the IT manager has to work with providers which they know they can trust.

Real success, however, comes from a partnership approach in which technology chiefs use trusted suppliers they can work closely with to deliver ongoing innovation.

Take consumer giant Procter & Gamble (P&G), for example, which has created a global business services division that looks to consolidate and then outsource non-core IT activities. The approach relies on strategic partnerships with key service providers and it is an approach that has cut costs and increased innovation.

The P&G approach has been honed over a number of years and the sheer size of the organisation means that it can benefit from economies of scale. But just because an organisation is large, it does not mean that lessons cannot be leant by smaller firms.

Treat a supplier simply as a source of software and you will undoubtedly come unstuck. Every deal matters and value comes from working with a solid and reliable supplier that understands your business and your challenges. And remember that innovative solutions to such challenges do not have to rely on new, expensive technology. Innovation could mean using existing IT resources in a smarter and more effective manner.

Finally, always remember to communicate your concerns. Work with colleagues, peers and suppliers to identify where improvements can be made.

So, why hold your suppliers at arms length when they can be your partners? You will always reap the rewards of a balanced partner relationship in which both customer and supplier are on a similar footing.

Further reading: 

http://www.mckinseyquarterly.com/From_internal_service_provider_to_strategic_partner_An_interview_with_the_head_of_Global_Business_Se

Is your IT supplier a partner? is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment

Take the public sector, where £2bn a year is spent on employing consultants and agency staff in Whitehall (see further reading, below). A Cabinet Office study showed that it cost an average of £100,000 a year to employ each consultant and at a time of constrained public spending, over-expenditure on non-permanent workers will not be tolerated.

Things are no simpler in the private sector. One recent report suggested that there are now half a million management consultants globally (see further reading). Finding external expertise is never easy, but how do you pick the right needle from the consultancy haystack in such cost-constrained times?

More specifically, what expertise should you look for and what guidelines and services will create consultancy that works for your business? Your selections should be based around four guiding principles: knowledge, partnership, commitment and experience.

First, look for a consultant that understands the technology you are about to implement. Do not simply employ the same consultancy every time. Each job has a different requirement and the non-permanent nature of contractors should give you the option to be choosey.

Then make sure you look for a service team that will be able to work with your existing in-house team. There is no point upsetting trusted permanent staff by contracting ‘know it all’ external experts who actually know very little.

Also pay attention to the breadth of a particular consultancy’s service offering. Big is not necessarily best and you should concentrate on the firm that will be able to provide a long-term commitment across crucial areas, such as design, migration and deployment.

Finally, trust experienced service providers and always select a firm with best practice references. Advanced Business Solutions is able to boast more than 512 man years of experience and over 100 specialists across various consultancy teams, for example. It is this kind of expertise that can mean selecting a consultant does not have to be a painful process.

Further reading:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/7837706/Taxpayers-spend-2bn-a-year-on-consultants-in-Whitehall.html

http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-the-management-consultancy-scam-2057127.html

How do you pick the right technology consultant? is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment