SIL

The challenge

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Move away from rigid corporate system and lengthy manual processes

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The finance team at SIL did battle every day with a big, rigid, corporate software system that it couldn't control. As a trading company spun out from Liverpool City Council, SIL had its own instance of SAP inside the council's own bigger system. Anything that involved bank transactions had to be handled by the council's finance department. Simple financial information could take a week to extract.

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"Looking at aged debt, or anything like that, was near-impossible because we were reliant on our stakeholder to update our accounts for us," says Karen Lea, Head of Finance.

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Processes were manual and disconnected. Although a customer could easily book a course online, that transaction generated a complex workflow behind the scenes that involved pulling information from the website, keying in data to the finance system and printing off a paper invoice for posting. When the team wanted to see credit card payments net of VAT, Karen was told this function would have to be switched on for the whole SAP system. The implementation costs were considered too substantial to justify the upgrade.

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Managing overdue bills was impossible because SIL's income sat in a suspense account for a member of staff to review and allocate against sales. "That was only updated every three months – so you couldn't chase aged debt because we were always three months behind," says Karen.

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When it came to reporting, SIL couldn't get the data it needed without extensive manual work. To see which sectors or geographical areas were generating sales, the team had to look up customer information and enter it into spreadsheets alongside the income figures.

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"There were elements where it took a week to pull together information," says Karen. "Reporting our P&L to the board or shareholder used to take me two or three days in SAP. I had a spreadsheet, including a tab with all my account codes, and I had to manually categorise everything."

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The solution

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New system saved time and improved accuracy

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A new CEO at SIL appreciated the need to change – and when Liverpool City Council decided to move to a new system, SIL took the opportunity to find its own solution.

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Karen drew up a shortlist of three systems that had the functionality SIL needed. "I wanted a system that was a lot more modern – one where we could drill down from a payment to the level of an individual order, or the other way around," she says. "There was something about iplicit – we just liked the feel of it."

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She found iplicit responsive to SIL's particular needs. "A lot of our customers still pay by cheque and when we met with iplicit, they showed us how cheques could be paid in and reconciled," she says. "With other systems, we'd have to buy an income management add-on and the additional cost of this represented a major drawback for us."

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iplicit's implementation team took SIL through the process of building the workflows it wanted, as well as replicating the accounts structure in a new system. "The implementation team was marvellous. They built everything we asked for. We've used a finance system but never implemented one, so to be handheld through the process was fantastic," says Karen. "The customer support afterwards has been fantastic."

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Everyday accounting became a lot easier after the switch, with approval workflows more efficient but rigorous. Karen appreciates having documentation attached in the system to any spending she needs to authorise.

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"If somebody says 'Can I have an updated P&L?', it takes me two seconds to refresh the data in my spreadsheet instead of two to three days."

Karen Lea, Head of Finance

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After an initial hour or 90 minutes designing a P&L in Excel, producing reports takes moments. "Updating it takes only as long as it takes to open Excel," says Karen. "If somebody says 'Can I have an updated P&L?', it takes me two seconds to refresh the data in my spreadsheet instead of two to three days."

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iplicit's live integration with Excel is one of the most useful features for Karen. "I'm pulling data that would have taken weeks to put together previously. Depending how complicated it is, it might take a day or might take a lot less."

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With much less work to be done manually, accuracy has also improved. "The less you have to touch your data, the fewer errors there are," says Karen.

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The outcome

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Time saved on processes can be spent analysing and forecasting

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iplicit has transformed the team's ability to report and analyse. With an unlimited number of accounting dimensions, customers are classified by area, phase of school and by type of school. "If I want to run a report on each area or on an employee, I can do that," says Karen. "But the big thing for me is product codes. We have around 400 products and I have a massive report covering a 12-month period for every product. I can pull through the data for each product for any month."

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The aged debt reports that were so hard to produce before are now available in real time. "I can just go into iplicit and see the aged debt, not only by customer but by geographical area or in other ways," Karen adds.

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"iplicit has freed us up to look at future years, rather than always being insular and worrying about year one."

Karen Lea, Head of Finance

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She has been impressed by continuous improvement at iplicit. "I don't think SAP changed in the 10 years we had it," she says. "We've only been on iplicit about 10 months and it's already changed for the better. For example, the budgeting tool is so much better than it was originally."

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Having saved so much time on regular tasks, the team can direct those hours into more forward-looking work. "In the past, we were looking back at transactional data rather than trying to forecast – because the system wouldn't allow that," says Karen. "Now, we're producing data in minutes, so I have the time to analyse what the data is telling me."

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This new focus on forecasting and analysis is making the team's work ever more valuable. Karen says: "If your people are just working on producing numbers, you're not looking to the future and you're not utilising people's skills for the most productive work. iplicit has freed us up to look at future years, rather than always being insular and worrying about year one."