Meeting the global requirements of the office of finance

Competing in the global financial services industry is not easy. CFOs and their organizations face constant pressure to manage business performance, control costs and comply with a complex array of regulatory requirements. Along with these challenges come opportunities for finance organizations to add value to the business by enhancing business processes and systems and extending effective financial management capabilities across the enterprise. And the odds are high that, in trying to meet these demanding business requirements, financial services companies are dependent on an outmoded legacy architecture where systems can’t communicate within the company, let alone with customers, trading partners, and regulators.

Many financial services companies have been at the leading edge of technology investments over the last 20-30 years to cater for their high volume complex information technology requirements. However today many are taking a hard look at their information needs to see how well supported these are by their aging IT infrastructures.

One great example of success is found in the heart of the City of London. The Corporation of Lloyd's is the administrative centre of the Lloyd's insurance market - the world's leading insurance market. Lloyd's recognizes the importance of technology as a means of achieving significant competitive advantages.

In the early 1990's it was recognized that the existing set of accounting applications located on a corporate mainframe were no longer operating either effectively or efficiently and that a replacement financial solution was needed. Daniel Scullion, Systems Accountant, Corporation of Lloyd's explains, "SunSystems was the most cost-effective route to follow and, in addition, it gave us far more reporting functionality than the legacy mainframe system. SunSystems is also very scalable and flexible and we were confident that it would meet our requirements well into the future."

The Corporation of Lloyd's very much appreciated SunSystems' flexibility and have developed and enhanced SunSystems to meet the organization's changing needs. "In the early days we had large volumes of data, so it was important that we had something that could cater for this and be reliable and stable," comments Scullion. "As the organization has changed, so have our requirements and we no longer need the processing capabilities that we had. The emphasis is more on reporting and because SunSystems was flexible enough to integrate with other products it has successfully met our changing information requirements."

In order to meet the Corporation's business objectives and improve access to information across the organization, it soon became apparent that a robust management reporting system was required to integrate with SunSystems.  The preferred choice was Vision which, like SunSystems, offered a cost effective and scalable solution. "We looked at other management reporting systems on the market but Vision had the requisite scalability to suit a whole range of different users", explains Scullion.

"There are not many other products that give you that kind of flexibility, and with a fairly easy start up we've literally taken Vision out of the box and deployed it across more than 100 users in the Corporation."

Vision gives the Corporation of Lloyd's the ability to open up SunSystems data to a much wider audience, very economically and without the need for hundreds of additional SunSystems licenses. Scullion explains, "The current mission is to deliver Vision tools to managers' desktops, across two Lloyd's sites in London and Chatham and also to some of our subsidiaries. One of the good things about Vision is that it is very user-friendly. There are some users that will use a lot more functionality than others, but Vision can cater equally well for the basic or more sophisticated type of user."

"Increasingly, non-finance staffs are being expected to look at management accounts, and with Vision on their desktop they will have an easy route to the answers. With Vision you can actually 'drill down' to greater detail within the analyses, without having to run off a large number of separate reports."

Scullion identified that a key part of the new management reporting system would be its security functionality, "We are very conscious that we want to empower users outside the Accounting Services Department, but at the same time we have to retain control over the numbers going back into the system. We are confident that Vision gives us that control. In addition, Vision makes it very easy to access data electronically, which makes us feel more confident about the information we receive since it is generated at source and is error-free."  Using Vision, Corporation of Lloyd's is able to dramatically reduce the amount of re-keying of data across the organization, improving productivity.  "Where Vision has helped us most is to reduce the amount of manual processing, saving the Corporation at least three man months of work," says Scullion.

By implementing SunSystems and Vision Enterprise on Microsoft SQL Server, the Corporation is now reaping the benefits of a highly flexible, integrated business management solution which has streamlined operations and improved access to information right across the organization.

Cost control is also a huge and growing problem - especially with the pressure on controlling the international travel costs associated with international business.

Thomas Miller has been steadily and successfully expanding its scope of business since the mid 1980s. As a management company for insurance businesses, Thomas Miller employs over 550 people worldwide and has offices on four continents.

Thomas Miller's geographically dispersed client base necessitates a high level of business travel. Historically control of these costs relied upon the manual submission of expenses claims with travel plans, approval on costs and a notice to travel secured in advance. These processes were labor and time intensive. Consequently Thomas Miller began examining electronic alternatives and Infor Expense Management was selected as the preferred solution. Infor Expense Management captures, processes, and analyses all employee-initiated spending for goods or services not captured by a purchase order process. The Infor Travel Plans module handles pre-trip authorization and travel procurement whilst Infor Expense Reports automates the entire expense reporting process from report creation to approval and reimbursement, including corporate card transactions and data from other electronic feeds.

Real benefit and added value has been derived from the integration of Infor Expense Management with the systems at Reed & Mackay (R&M), the travel management company used by Thomas Miller. Thomas Miller worked with R&M to integrate their invoice data with the Expense Management solution from Infor.

R&M now submits a daily electronic file of transactions to Thomas Miller, which is then uploaded into the individual accounts of Thomas Miller employees. Employees then import these transactions into an expense claim, where it is submitted for approval to the cost centre manager and finance department. From that, Thomas Miller pays R&M. This cuts out the manual processing of travel agent invoices by the finance team, decreases the likelihood of incorrect allocation of travel expenses to cost centers and provides a simpler, automated process with much improved reporting capabilities.

"Because Infor Expense Management reduces costs by eliminating the manual, error-prone processes we used to use, it has made a tangible difference in a short period of time. In the regulated world of financial services, Infor Expense Management also means we can ensure we meet corporate directives and regulation. This means not only can we be more confident in our compliance but also we can maximize our use of preferred suppliers and thus secure optimum discounts for business travel and associated services." Elizabeth Ramirez, Assistant Group Systems Accountant, Thomas Miller

For more than 25 years, Infor has been supplying leading multinational financial services organization with best in class financial management systems.  Infor's financial management suite is used by customers in over 170 countries around the world and includes accounting, financial reporting and analysis, expense management, budgeting, forecasting and other capabilities that improve transparency, enforce global financial standards and processes, shorten process cycle times and increase profitability.  

To learn more about our solutions visit:

Infor FMS SunSystems

Infor Expense Management