Case Studies:-

Financial Management - Business Financial Healthcheck Case Study

A Financial and Risk Review was undertaken following the acquisition of a company with 50 employees. Having introduced a very simple and cheap Purchase Order System, it was quickly identified that an employee was fraudulently processing invoices for a different company (with a similar name) through the books of this company. As a result we recovered over £100,000.

 

Financial Management - Business Financial Healthcheck Case Study

"We are making a lot of money - but we don't know really know how or where?". This, was the surprising statement from one mainly Business to Business service company. We worked with this company producing a guide to product profitability. We identified ways to both increase revenue and reduce cost on non-added-value services. This led to the development of a system to collect customer data which enabled the company to truly evaluate its different business relationships. This sharply increased the companies profile and profitability in a market that was very competitive.

 

Process Improvement - Case Study

We were engaged by a Financial Services company to undertake Activity Based Costing to ascertain how much in processing it cost the company to take on a new client. We Quickly identified the costs to be between £600 and £650 and that the processes and costs “out of control”. We recommended some process review work (process reengineering) to the new CEO and FD. Within a short time we implemented a process with better service levels, Monitored KPI’s and importantly with the costs reduced to under £250. (KPI’s are Key Performance indicators which allows a Manager to monitor what is important to the business and their customers)

 

Change Management - Case Study

A company identified that its basic accounting was "out of control", its staff were demoralised, the work was not being completed in time. For over two years the company had tried to solve the problem by a large number of temporary accountants. We found that the temporary accountants hindered rather than helped and were a key source of staff discontent. We also found that the process and methods being used were from the stone age.

We took the following steps:

It took careful management and support but within the year the area had high morale and was recognised as a success story.

 

Change Management - Case Study

A company wanted to roll out a basic reporting system to 42 businesses. Its traditional method was to have a phased roll out by an implementation team but this would have taken over 5 years to achieve. We were asked for an alternative.

We developed a "cookbook approach". We piloted the implementation with the team in two businesses and used the lessons learnt to both develop tools to assist in the global implementation and to write a "cookbook" of the steps. We then set the target for all the other businesses to implement simultaneously using the cookbook and the tools. The members of the core team were used as "experts" for the businesses seek help and assistance. All 42 businesses implemented on time and on budget.

 

Risk - Business Continuity Planning - Case Study

It's obvious what we do in a disaster recovery situation - we look after our customers first". So when the toilets badly flooded, the Finance area was sent home and Customer Services and New Accounts took over their workstations. This almost destroyed the company! It was only due to the fact that was short that the company managed to recover from its very big mistake.

Because Finance had gone home no one was taking responsibility for the company money - large payments were due to be made to suppliers. The fact that these were not made caused significant difficulty and if the situation had not been resolved the next day future business relationships would have been jeopardised. The business should have ensured both that these payments were made and the companies money was properly monitored.

 

Risk - Business Continuity Planning - Case Study

We reviewed one English Company's Disaster Recovery Plan and discovered that it had telephone numbers of contacts in Wales. It was, in fact, a copy of a Welsh site's Plan with just the company name changed. The explanation was - it keeps the auditors happy!

As many of the basic procedures in the plan was essentially right it was very simple to update the plan and fill the gaps for some notable exceptions.

Do your Business Continuity Plan now

Not when its too late!

For further information please contact us.