Decisions on financial management systems (FMS) can be the trickiest of all. First, there’s a great deal of choice – there are literally hundreds of potential supplies out there. Second, which options will best suit your business?

You need to recognise that financial clarity across all businesses is becoming a business necessity, especially in the post-recession age. The ‘more for less’ mantra that has pushed business operations during the two years of the downturn will become the new business norm.

Senior executives are looking, and will carry on searching, for technologies that can help measure, analyse and drive continuous improvements in the financial performance of operations. FMS can help executives – but only if you purchase the right technology.

Your search for a finance system should be guided by three key watchwords: functionality, integration and reputation. The functionality of your selected FMS will vary with the size of your business and the demands of your operation.

High levels of automation are now available, allowing employees to ‘self serve’ in relation to their own finance information. The right reporting and business intelligence tools will also allow you to analyse data and produce decision-making reports quickly without the pain of manual extraction.

Other time-saving functions are likely to be important such as electronic procurement, which allows the electronic procurement of goods, and workflow for the easy distribution of information. Care organisations may also require intelligent income management to more easily manage varied invoicing requirements.

Always think about the finance applications you require both now and into the future and ensure the supplier you identify has the breadth of functionality to meet your needs as well as the capabilities to deliver a single, integrated solution. Finance applications that aren’t integrated will result in a lack of both organisation-wide automation and financial visibility.

When sourcing a supplier, think carefully about your requirements and pick a reliable and reputable partner that understands UK regulations and business requirements and that has a strong track record of successful FMS implementations.

What to look for when you purchase a financial management system is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment

To me it comes down to proper planning and submitting the return before the deadline.  My brother runs a tax practice and generally we don’t see him in January as he is working pretty much 24×7 submitting returns for clients that don’t get their records to him in reasonable time.  Explaining to them the consequences of their actions is not always a comfortable experience!

Having confirmed my UTR in December (and having had to reapply for the password!) I pressed the submit button on Sunday 4th January at 14.33 and was somewhat amazed to see a small tax rebate in my bank account the following Friday 9th January.  Less than a week for processing the claim, confirming the rebate and getting this into my bank account is nothing short of excellent.

I wonder how many organisations pay their suppliers in less than a week of getting the invoice!

All hail, HMRC! is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment

A lot of implementations that I see, and the discussions that I have with practitioners who have implemented them, seem to offer little to the business and display only a passing acquaintance with anything that could remotely be termed as intelligence.

Why is this? Organisations, like people, are deeply flawed. They are prone to behaviours that in the short term seem to offer solutions but in the long term deliver little.

Who is to blame? Well many people would blame suppliers. Just as we often do in our private lives when we see that we drink and eat too much and exercise too little. If only there weren’t so many adverts on TV pushing unhealthy foods and so many of those tempting ‘buy one get one free offers’ in the stores with their easy access and parking then I would be that slim Adonis, that is struggling to get out of this current wreck of a body. Suppliers are as ready in the corporate IT world to pander to our organisation’s weaknesses as they are in our private lives to our own weaknesses.

Middle Age writers looked at Man and saw what a weak vessel he was and came up with the Seven Deadly Sins of pride, covetousness, lust, envy, gluttony and drunkenness, anger and sloth. I have looked at modern businesses and have likewise come up with the Seven Deadly Sins of Business Intelligence. Just to avoid the charge of pride, I realise that they don’t quite have the grandeur of Saint Thomas Acquinas’s Summa Theologica, and I don’t expect to see an upsurge of Morality Plays based on them. On the other hand, I do expect to see projects that work and which deliver the real value to every organisation.

The Seven Sins are:

1. Being unprepared.
2. Lacking direction.
3. Unsuitability of those doing the job.
4. Wrong culture.
5. Technology fixated.
6. Underestimation.
7. Unthinking.

And of all of these Technology Fixation is the most prevalent. I get to read lots of invitation to tenders and visit prospective clients who have invested an enormous amount of time and effort in coming up with what the technology needs to be able to do. There is often a direct correlation to the lack of thinking that has been done with what they will actually do with these products when they get them. To be clear these projects rarely fail because of technology.

There is a lot of wishful thinking that goes on. Think about exercise bikes and home gyms. We know we are too fat and unhealthy. We would like to be like the photos of those lithe athletes. They are peddling the exercise bike and using the home gym. If only we had that exercise bike and home gym we too could look just like that. Which is correct other than the fact that we are lazy couch potatoes who will not take an hour out of our day to actually do something, unlike the beaming models that so obviously do.

Business Intelligence is no different. Business Intelligence tools work well and have been used to great effect by lean and fit organisations, those that have a sense of purpose and vision, that have a culture of analysing problems and doing something about them and that are prepared to invest, not just the money, but, so much more importantly, the time and effort required.

So many other organisations are in the position of the 9 stone weakling, who having sent off to Charles Atlas, the body builder, for his famous exercise regime, was forced to write in:

‘Yesterday, I received the Dynamic Tension programme in the post. Could you now please send the muscles?’

Business Intelligence should be about the transformation of the organisation. There is a technology aspect to this but don’t be fooled that it is as easy as buying a product. Look at your organisation and think about the hard work that needs to go into turning it into one that can use Business Intelligence to improve and compete.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Business Intelligence is a post from Advanced Business Solutions - Supplier of accounting software, business intelligence and document managment