Membership Organisation Cbi Streamlines Its Financial Systems With ST Consulting

PR Log (Press Release) – Nov 04, 2009 – The CBI, the premier lobbying organisation for UK businesses, has gone live with Microsoft Dynamics GP Version 9 with implementation and support provided by ST Consulting, a Microsoft Dynamics partner in London.

As a London-based Microsoft Dynamics partner ST Consulting provides Microsoft Dynamics GP and Microsoft Dynamics CRM systems to a broad range of vertical markets and is also a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner.

Since implementing Version 9 of Microsoft Dynamics, the CBI finance team has been able to reduce time spent on routine transactional number-crunching and accounts administration tasks and focus more on achieving a quicker turnaround in the monthly accounting close procedure. The new system has also enabled the CBI to provide a more dynamic financial reporting, planning and analysis function more directly to its budget-holder business managers and other internal and external stakeholders.

The CBI finance team selected ST Consulting, a Microsoft Dynamics partner in London, for the company’s proven technical knowledge in accountancy as well as its Microsoft Dynamics systems expertise.

According to Sree Bhaskaran, Financial Controller at the CBI, “The great thing about ST Consulting is the team’s superior accounting knowledge. Technical expertise in systems is without a doubt, important in order to set up the systems in the right way, but a good understanding of accounting concepts, and the controls (both standard and customised) that lie behind key accounting processes, is also vital.”

“ST Consulting was able to make suggestions and think ahead in terms of some of our accounting requirements, which is an enormous help. Our system is now holistically integrated, flexible and responsive to the CBI’s business needs. We now have the system capability to perform additional forecasting exercises during the year relatively easily should we wish to do so, which is very useful in the current climate where things are changing so quickly.”

London-based Microsoft Dynamics partner, ST Consulting, also integrated the Dynamics software with the CBI’s Integra sales processing and sales ledger system for sales of members’ subscriptions and commercial events, working closely with the Integra system provider. The integration has cut out the duplication of effort that was present in this area of the CBI’s activities and it enables the finance team to analyse various commercial events run by the CBI - such as seminars, conferences and annual dinners and lunches - by event type, location and revenue and expenditure types to evaluate and compare profit margins and report on their financial performance.

The CBI finance team has also automated the monthly payroll journal postings into Dynamics. Payroll information from the payroll processing bureau is sent via Excel files which feed into an integration journal built by London-based Microsoft Dynamics partner, ST Consulting. This electronic journal is then checked and automatically posted into the Dynamics general ledger thus removing the need to manually key-in the payroll data. This has freed up some valuable finance team time which is now used to focus on more productive work such as managing exceptions and analysis, rather than routine transactional data entry.

Haseet Sanghrajka, Managing Director of London-based Microsoft Dynamics partner, ST Consulting, said, “For all organisations, it is vital that systems can talk to one another in order to provide information required for the business operations to run smoothly. It is important to have excellent technical capability to be able to integrate systems, but as well it is vital to apply this knowledge in the context of the customer’s business requirements. Over the years we have built up the necessary industry and technical expertise to ensure that we deliver the right business solution that gets customers results.”