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Best in Class Finance Functions For Police Forces
Background
Police funding has risen by £4.8 billion and 77 per cent (39 per cent in real terms) since 1997. However the days where forces have enjoyed such levels of funding are over.
Chief Constables and senior management recognize that the annual cycle of looking for efficiencies year-on-year is not sustainable, and will not address the cash shortfall in years to come.
Facing slower funding growth and real cash deficits in their budgets, the Police Service must adopt innovative strategies which generate the productivity and efficiency gains needed to deliver high quality policing to the public.
The step-change in performance required to meet this challenge will only be achieved if the police service fully embraces effective resource management and makes efficient and productive use of its technology, partnerships and people.
The finance function has an essential role to play in addressing these challenges and supporting Forces’ objectives economically and efficiently.
Challenge
Police Forces tend to nurture a divisional and departmental culture rather than a corporate one, with individual procurement activities that do not exploit economies of scale. This is in part the result of over a decade of devolving functions from the center to the.divisions.
In order to reduce costs, improve efficiency and mitigate against the threat of “top down” mandatory, centrally-driven initiatives, Police Forces need to set up a corporate back office and induce behavioral change. This change must involve compliance with a corporate culture rather than a series of silos running through the organization.
Developing a Best in Class Finance Function
Traditionally finance functions within Police Forces have focused on transactional processing with only limited support for management information and business decision support. With a renewed focus on efficiencies, there is now a pressing need for finance departments to transform in order to add greater value to the force but with minimal costs.
1) Aligning to Force Strategy
As Police Forces need finance to function, it is imperative that finance and operations are closely aligned. This collaboration can be very powerful and help deliver significant improvements to a Force, but in order to achieve this model, there are many barriers to overcome. Finance Directors must look at whether their Force is ready for this collaboration, but more importantly, they must consider whether the Force itself can survive without it.
Finance requires a clear vision that centers around its role as a balanced business partner. However to achieve this vision a huge effort is required from the bottom up to understand the significant complexity in underlying systems and processes and to devise a way forward that can work for that particular organization.
The success of any change management program is dependent on its execution. Change is difficult and costly to execute correctly, and often, Police Forces lack the relevant experience to achieve such change. Although finance directors are required to hold appropriate professional qualifications (as opposed to being former police officers as was the case a few years ago) many have progressed within the Public Sector with limited opportunities for learning from and interaction with best in class methodologies. In addition cultural issues around self-preservation can present barriers to change.
Whilst it is relatively easy to get the message of finance transformation across, securing commitment to embark on bold change can be tough. Business cases often lack the quality required to drive through change and even where they are of exceptional quality senior police officers often lack the commercial awareness to trust them.
2) Supporting Force Decisions
Many Finance Directors are keen to develop their finance functions. The challenge they face is convincing the rest of the Force that the finance function can add value – by devoting more time and effort to financial analysis and providing senior management with the tools to understand the financial implications of major strategic decisions.
Maintaining Financial Controls and Managing Risk
Sarbanes Oxley, International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), Basel II and Individual Capital Assessments (ICA) have all put financial controls and reporting under the spotlight in the private sector. This in turn is increasing the spotlight on financial controls in the public sector.
A ‘Best in Class’ Police Force finance function will not just have the minimum controls to meet the regulatory requirements but will evaluate how the legislation and regulations that the finance function are required to comply with, can be leveraged to provide value to the organization. Providing strategic information that will enable the force to meet its objectives is a key task for a leading finance function.
3) Value to the Force
The drive for development over the last decade or so, has moved decision making to the Divisions and has led to an increase in costs in the finance function. Through utilizing a number of initiatives in a program of transformation, a Force can leverage up to 40% of savings on the cost of finance together with improving the responsiveness of finance teams and the quality of financial information. These initiatives include:
Centralization
By centralizing the finance function, a Police Force can create centers of excellence where industry best practice can be developed and shared. This will not only re-empower the department, creating greater independence and objectivity in assessing projects and performance, but also lead to more consistent management information and a higher degree of control. A Police Force can also develop a business partner group to act as strategic liaisons to departments and divisions. The business partners would, for example, advise on how the departmental and divisional commanders can meet the budget in future months instead of merely advising that the budget has been missed for the previous month.
With the mundane number crunching being performed in a shared service center, finance professionals will find they now have time to act as business partners to divisions and departments and focus on the strategic issues.
The cultural impact on the departments and divisional commanders should not be underestimated. Commanders will be concerned that:
o Their budgets will be centralized
o Workloads would increase
o There will be limited access to finance individuals
o There will not be on site support
However, if the centralized shared service center is designed appropriately none of the above should apply. In fact from centralization under a best practice model, leaders should accrue the following benefits:
o Strategic advice provided by business partners
o Increased flexibility
o Improved management information
o Faster transactions
o Reduced number of unresolved queries
o Greater clarity on service and cost of provision
o Forum for finance to be strategically aligned to the needs of the Force
A Force that moves from a de-centralized to a centralized system should try and ensure that the finance function does not lose touch with the Chief Constable and Divisional Commanders. Forces need to have a robust business case for finance transformation combined with a governance structure that spans operational, tactical and strategic requirements. There is a risk that potential benefits of implementing such a change may not be realized if the program is not carefully managed. Investment is needed to create a successful centralized finance function. Typically the future potential benefits of greater visibility and control, consistent processes, standardized management information, economies of scale, long-term cost savings and an empowered group of proud finance professionals, should outweigh those initial costs.
To reduce the commercial, operational and capability risks, the finance functions can be completely outsourced or partially outsourced to third parties. This will provide guaranteed cost benefits and may provide the opportunity to leverage relationships with vendors that provide best practice processes.
Process Efficiencies
Typically for Police Forces the focus on development has developed a silo based culture with disparate processes. As a result significant opportunities exist for standardization and simplification of processes which provide scalability, reduce manual effort and deliver business benefit. From simply rationalizing processes, a force can typically accrue a 40% reduction in the number of processes. An example of this is the use of electronic bank statements instead of using the manual bank statement for bank reconciliation and accounts receivable processes. This would save considerable effort that is involved in analyzing the data, moving the data onto different spreadsheet and inputting the data into the financial systems.
Organizations that possess a silo operating model tend to have significant inefficiencies and duplication in their processes, for example in HR and Payroll. This is largely due to the teams involved meeting their own goals but not aligning to the corporate objectives of an organization. Police Forces have a number of independent teams that are reliant on one another for data with finance in departments, divisions and headquarters sending and receiving information from each other as well as from the rest of the Force. The silo model leads to ineffective data being received by the teams that then have to carry out additional work to obtain the information required.
Whilst the argument for development has been well made in the context of moving decision making closer to operational service delivery, the added cost in terms of resources, duplication and misaligned processes has rarely featured in the debate. In the current financial climate these costs need to be recognized.
Culture
Within transactional processes, a leading finance function will set up targets for staff members on a daily basis. This target setting is an element of the metric based culture that leading finance functions develop. If the appropriate metrics of productivity and quality are applied and when these targets are challenging but not impossible, this is proven to result in improvements to productivity and quality.
A ‘Best in Class’ finance function in Police Forces will have a service focused culture, with the primary objectives of providing a high level of satisfaction for its customers (departments, divisions, employees & suppliers). A ‘Best in Class’ finance function will measure customer satisfaction on a timely basis through a metric based approach. This will be combined with a team wide focus on process improvement, with process owners, that will not necessarily be the team leads, owning force-wide improvement to each of the finance processes.
Organizational Improvements
Organizational structures within Police Forces are typically made up of supervisors leading teams of one to four team members. Through centralizing and consolidating the finance function, an opportunity exists to increase the span of control to best practice levels of 6 to 8 team members to one team lead / supervisor. By adjusting the organizational structure and increasing the span of control, Police Forces can accrue significant cashable benefit from a reduction in the number of team leads and team leads can accrue better management experience from managing larger teams.
Technology Enabled Improvements
There are a significant number of technology improvements that a Police Force could implement to help develop a ‘Best in Class’ finance function.
These include:
A) Scanning and workflow
Through adopting a scanning and workflow solution to replace manual processes, improved visibility, transparency and efficiencies can be reaped.
B) Call logging, tracking and workflow tool
Police Forces generally have a number of individuals responding to internal and supplier queries. These queries are neither logged nor tracked. The consequence of this is dual:
o Queries consume considerable effort within a particular finance team. There is a high risk of duplicated effort from the lack of logging of queries. For example, a query could be responded to for 30 minutes by person A in the finance team. Due to this query not being logged, if the individual that raised the query called up again and spoke to a different person then just for one additional question, this could take up to 20 minutes to ensure that the background was appropriately explained.
o Queries can have numerous interfaces with the business. An unresolved query can be responded against by up to four separate teams with considerable delay in providing a clear answer for the supplier.
The implementation of a call logging, tracking and workflow tool to document, measure and close internal and supplier queries combined with the set up of a central queries team, would significantly reduce the effort involved in responding to queries within the finance departments and divisions, as well as within the actual divisions and departments, and procurement.
C) Database solution
Throughout finance departments there are a significant number of spreadsheets utilized prior to input into the financial system. There is a tendency to transfer information manually from one spreadsheet to another to meet the needs of different teams.
Replacing the spreadsheets with a database solution would rationalize the number of inputs and lead to effort savings for the front line Police Officers as well as Police Staff.
D) Customize reports
In obtaining management information from the financial systems, police staff run a series of reports, import these into excel, use lookups to match the data and implement pivots to illustrate the data as required. There is significant manual effort that is involved in carrying out this work. Through customizing reports the outputs from the financial system can be set up to provide the data in the formats required through the click of a button. This would have the benefit of reduced effort and improved motivation for team members that previously carried out these mundane tasks.
In designing, procuring and implementing new technology enabling tools, a Police Force will face a number of challenges including investment approval; IT capacity; capability; and procurement.
These challenges can be mitigated through partnering with a third party service company with whom the investment can be shared, the skills can be provided and the procurement cycle can be minimized.
Conclusion
It is clear that cultural, process and technology change is required if police forces are to deliver both sustainable efficiencies and high quality services. In an environment where for the first time forces face real cash deficits and face having to reduce police officer and support staff numbers whilst maintaining current performance levels the current finance delivery models requires new thinking.
While there a number of barriers to be overcome in achieving a best in class finance function, it won’t be long before such a decision becomes mandatory. Those who are ahead of the curve will inevitably find themselves in a stronger position.
Rakesh Sangani is a Partner at Proservartner and focuses upon back office transformation within Police, Health, Local Government and Professional Services
Tertium Quids: Letting Finance do the dirty work
When the bill came up, there was a motion to send it to the Finance committee. When Sen. Creigh Deeds asked why it would need to go to Finance, Sen. Dick Saslaw barked that there was an impact statement, and this bill was going to cost …
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Top senators from both parties were closer to breaking a logjam on broader financial regulatory overhaul after agreeing to the creation of a new consumer-protection division within the Federal Reserve.
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ABN Newswire - Asian Markets Overview for March 3, 2010
Number 1. CONCEPT. Forex traders should know by now that the forex trading market is about trying to make big out of something small. This is in terms of earning big profits through smaller risks. Nobody is forex can control how this giant market is moving. Besides they would not start to understand it in the first place because the forex market is really really complicated and ever-changing.
People remain in the forex trading industry because they thought that the probability of making profit is bigger than the probability of getting losses. This thinking would have proven effective if the trader is aware that they need to execute stop lost in this concept. Really understanding this point in the course of the transaction and relying on the forex traders’ own initiative rules and discipline will surely prevent losses from happening.
Number 2. STOP LOSS AND TAKE PROFIT POINT. Many of the forex traders not using these two factors effectively and efficiently does not really make any money in forex trading. the traders usually buy a currency they think will rise, but eventually fell. In the anticipation that it will begin rising soon, the forex trader do not use stop loss. The loss then becomes larger and larger and the trader still waiting and hoping.
The common result when the foreign currency starts rising is there are more losses acquired to make up for the profits. Another result would be getting the currency out of the market so fast that the best opportunities are missed in the process. Forex traders often makes these mistakes over and over again especially if they do not consider these two important points.
Number 3. MARGIN ALLOCATION AND PROPORTIONAL DISTRIBUTION LAW. Combined forex orders are allowed only at a specific margin. But it cannot be used all in one shot. So if forex traders buy up but the trend fall out of the expectation, the trader will find himself in a passive condition.
It is still best to stop loss after buying a position once there is a sudden shift in the forex market. For markets with consistent movement, there will be more profits to utilize to supplement the margin. The profit has a tendency to continue to rise too.
Number 4. CHOOSING THE PROPER TIME TO BEST EXECUTE THE ORDER. Fundamental analysis of the forex market is the key. Even technical analysts prefer this method. Forex traders must use fundamental analysis to determine when is the best time to enter the forex market and trading.
Forex traders must also use their own preferred forex views and charts to be able to execute an order. It is important to note that every forex trader has to formulate their own regulations and source of information that they can check upon whenever the need for it arise. It is also important to note that these things may affect how the trade will result to.
Another way is to try and analyze the market by looking at the movement of the forex currency. Analyze the rising and falling of the currency and see, even guess the probability of things that might happen next. When there are forecasts of good things to come, the forex trader should grab that opportunity to choose the right currency to invest on.
These are the four forex strategy that is used by many traders nowadays. These four important points have been proven to bring in more positive results in forex trading. There have already been lots of other advices that are also effective but these are the newly developed ones that can cater to the changes that the forex market is going through.
It is important to note that these forex points and strategies should not be the only ones a forex trader can use in their trade. there are still many of the old and the new ones that forex trades can use in their trading. All in all, the final decision would still depend upon the say of the trader.
There is also these other factors called luck and fortune. Sometimes they do tend to play some joke in the forex trading community and can bring down even the best of the best traders to their knees.
Kevin Anderson is the owner and operator of http://www.forextradingcenter.info a site developed to give users the most updated information on how to trade Forex properly to make a profit.
Financial Lessons Learned From Hiking – Canadian Finance Blog
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Accounts Receivable Financing – Be Inspired
Benjamin Zander and his wife wrote a book entitled: “The Art of Possibility; Transforming Professional and Personal Life”. Their idea is that “you can create a passionate energy permeating The Art of Possibility that will be a true force in your life. You can make your own rules.” Their book is inspirational. You will be inspired if you buy and read it. The question is: how does this pertain to accounts receivable financing?
It’s all about attitude, enthusiasm and point of view regarding how to conduct your business. Can you make your own rules regarding how banks, commercial finance companies and other financial entities operate? Of course not. Can you make your own rules regarding how you utilize the financial recourses that are available to finance your business? Absolutely!
Here are three examples how to harness the power of accounts receivable financing sometimes with other types of financing to grow your B2B business.
Case Study One:
A Solar Energy Company that designed and supervised the installation of renewable energy systems was unable to obtain bank financing. They were one of the area’s lowest cost providers of solar panels, system design and supervision. One of their biggest assets was State Solar Tax Credits that are paid to homeowners who install the solar energy systems. An obligation from a State to a consumer is not within the definition of an account receivable. In other words, it could not be financed because it was not an obligation to a business. Using the art of possibility, the homeowners were persuaded to assign their solar tax credits to the Solar Energy Company. This transformed a consumer receivable into a commercial accounts receivable. Voila! The Solar Energy Company received accounts receivable financing it needed to grow.
Case Study Two:
An individual purchased an Importing Company that had been financed with a bank’s SBA loan. As collateral for the loan, the bank placed a UCC1 filing on the accounts receivable and inventory of the business. UCC refers to the Uniform Commercial Code in effect throughout the United States of America. In some respects, it simplifies the process of lending, selling and borrowing nationally. In other ways it is very complex. A UCC1 filing by a bank usually prevents any further financing because there is no collateral left to be financed. It is similar to a first mortgage loan on a house. If you have a 95% loan on your house, no other financing is available on the house because there is no equity to lend on. Using the art of possibility, the Importing Company was successful in convincing the bank to subordinate their UCC1 filing to another commercial lender’s UCC1. The Importing Company convinced the bank that it would be mutually beneficial to lower the bank’s UCC1 lien to a secondary position to allow a commercial finance company to offer new accounts receivable financing and inventory financing. Voila! The Importing business has a new credit line available for growth. It is now more profitable and the bank is more likely to be repaid. This is a win-win situation.
Case Study Three:
A start-up Clothing Company involved in manufacturing, distributing and designing T-shirts landed a substantial purchase order for their product. The product was to be made in China, and the Clothing Company lacked sufficient funds to pay for the costs of manufacture and distribution. Using the art of possibility, the Clothing Company obtained a letter of credit to guarantee the Chinese factory of payment, purchase order financing to pay for the T- shirts upon delivery, and accounts receivable financing to pay the purchase order company upon delivery of the goods to the customer in the US.
Accounts receivable financing can help your B2B business realize the art of possibility for growth and profits. Voila!
Mr. Elberg is a licensed attorney and licensed real estate broker. Gregg Financial Services is a full service brokerage for commercial finance companies and banks that fund B2B businesses. Mr. Elberg arranges funding from $25,000 to $50 million per month at competitive pricing, and works to reduce your financing costs as your company grows. For more information about GFS, please visit our website: http://www.greggfinancialservices.com
Copyright © 2007 Gregg Financial Services
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Social Finance and Philanthropy: A Special Section | eJewish …
The European edition of The Wall Street Journal has published a special section called Social Finance and Philanthropy. Here are just a few of the.
public budgeting and finance | Financial Budgeting Software
public budgeting and finance What is good about A educated Fin. Minister who cant bring relief to 80% of people in his budget ? Qualified Minister should be.
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ForexAutoPilot and ForexKiller are probably the biggest brand names in the automated forex trading system market. Both products are meant to help you make a profit out of the huge, lucrative market of currency trading, even without the knowledge a professional forex expert has. In this article I will compare some key points between the two products, in order to help you determine which of them suits you better.
- Mode of operation
Forex AutoPilot is a fully automatic forex trading robot. Not only does it decide what to trade – it can automatically issue the buy or sell order to your forex broker. In that respect, it can do the entire process for you, whether you’re out to lunch or asleep in bed.
Forex Killer does not issue automatic orders to forex brokers. It simply provides quick, ongoing analysis of the forex market and gives you recommendations. It is up to you to issue the orders to your forex broker. So you have some control over the process, and you give the final go – but it requires your intervention.
- Ease of installation
Forex AutoPilot has been getting some complaints about its installations process. Although the process s well covered in its users’ manual, it seems to be a consistent complaint and apparently the installation process is not straight-forward and smooth for some.
Forex Killer, to the best of my knowledge, does not get as many complaints about that.
- Credentials of creators
The creators of both Forex Autopilot and Forex Killer have extensive forex trading background.
Marcus Leary, the creator of Forex AutoPilot, is a senior forex trader by profession. He co-created Forex Autopilot with Steven Strauss, a mathematician who helped develop the mathematical formulas Forex AutoPilot uses.
Andreas Kirschberger, the creator of Forex Killer, is a former Deutche Bank forex advisor.
- Supported trading platforms
Forex Autopilot works on a single forex trading platform, Metatrader 4. While it is one of the most popular platforms out there, it is not supported by all forex brokers. You have to check with your forex broker whether he or she works with this platform or not.
Forex Killer works with every known trading platform, so in that respect it is more flexible. It is highly likely that your forex broker works with one or more of the platforms supported by Forex Killer (although it is always recommended to check).
- Reviews
Both Forex Auto Pilot and Forex Killer are highly acclaimed. They have gotten thousands of enthusiastic testimonials from users, and are considered world leaders in the automated forex trading software industry.
I hope this comparison helped you shed some light on both of these highly revered forex trading software products.
To read more about them and other automated forex software products, click here: Automatic forex trading systems review [http://www.squidoo.com/automated-forex-software].
Marvin Leicester was an engineer and marketing manager, who used work 9-to-5 for other people from a miniscule open-space cubicle – until he made his mind up to be his own boss and create a steady income for himself and his family working from home on his own terms. Click here to read his reviews on leading automated forex software tools [http://www.squidoo.com/automated-forex-software].
CRM Daily | Defense Finance Service Deploys Envision Centricity
The Defense Finance and Accounting Service
Financial Lessons Learned From Hiking – Canadian Finance Blog
The Canadian Source For Personal Finance. Home
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The Working Capital Journal is one of several commercial financing resources which should be reviewed regularly by small business owners to assist in keeping up with the imposing difficulties posed by rapid changes in the business finance funding climate. As noted below, there have been some surprising actions taken by lenders as a direct result of recent financial uncertainties. The increasingly complex and confusing environment for working capital finance is likely to produce several unexpected challenges for commercial borrowers.
The working capital finance industry has primarily been operating on a regional and local basis for many years. In response to cost-cutting that has permeated many industries, there has been a consolidation that has resulted in fewer effective commercial lenders throughout the United States. Most business owners have been understandably confused about what this might mean for the future of their commercial financing efforts, especially because this has happened in a relatively short period of time.
Of course, for some time there have been ongoing complex problems for commercial borrowers to avoid when seeking commercial loans. But what has produced a new set of business finance funding problems is that we appear to be entering a period which will be characterized by even more uncertainties in the economy. Previous rules and standards for commercial financing and working capital finance are likely to increasingly change quickly, with little advance notice by business lenders.
Business owners should make an extended effort to understand what is happening and what to do about it due to this realization that substantial changes are likely throughout the United States in the near future for commercial finance funding. At the forefront of these efforts should be a review of what actions commercial lenders have already taken in recent months. The Working Capital Journal is one prominent example of a free public resource that will facilitate a better understanding of the responses by business lenders to recent economic circumstances.
By publicizing actions taken by commercial lenders, this will contribute to these two goals, both of which are likely to be helpful to typical business owners: (1) To highlight controversial bank-lender tactics with a view toward reducing or eliminating questionable lending practices. (2) To help business owners prepare for commercial finance funding changes. To assist in this effort, sources such as The Working Capital Journal are encouraging business owners to report and describe their own experiences so that they can be shared with a broader audience that might benefit from the information. Some of the most significant commercial financing changes reported so far by commercial borrowers involve working capital loans, commercial construction financing and credit card financing. A notable situation of concern is that predatory lending practices by credit card issuers have been reported by many business owners. Some specific businesses such as restaurants are having an especially difficult time in surviving recently because they have been excluded from obtaining any new business financing by many banks.
One of the few recent bright spots in business finance funding, as noted in The Working Capital Journal, has been the continuing ability of business owners to obtain working capital quickly by business cash advance programs. For most businesses accepting credit cards, this commercial financing approach should be actively considered. Business cash advances are literally saving the day for many small business owners because most banks appear to be doing a terrible job of providing commercial loans and other working capital finance help in the midst of recent financial and economic uncertainties. For example, as noted above, restaurants are virtually unable to currently obtain commercial finance funding from most banks. Fortunately, restaurants accepting credit cards are in a good position to obtain needed cash from credit card receivables financing and merchant cash advances.
Obtain candid and individualized advice about commercial financing and business cash advances – Stephen Bush is a business finance funding expert => AEX Commercial Loans and Working Capital Finance.