Cornwall College, the third largest further and higher education college in the UK serving 45,000 students, is implementing a financial management system (FMS) with integrated budgeting, forecasting and planning functionality from Advanced Business Solutions (ABS). This FMS, which also comprises integrated cash flow forecasting, workflow and document imaging software, will cut the time taken to budget and forecast and enable the electronic circulation of 100,000 documents. The planned go live of the new ABS system is Q1 2012.
Cornwall College’s Finance Systems Manager, Christine Gosling, explains “Our current finance system cannot provide us with the sophisticated level of support we require. We need a finance system that is intuitive and flexible with advanced functionality so that we can streamline the flow of information, improve budgeting and forecasting and reduce our reliance on paper. After reviewing the market, Advanced Business Solutions’ finance system was the best choice for our needs.”
ABS’ finance system will provide Cornwall College with real-time budgetary information so that it can keep abreast of actual and expected financial expenditure, ultimately improving decision making. Currently, budgeting and forecasting is manually intensive and the data is soon out-of-date.
“We will reduce the time taken to compile and update budgets”, says Christine Gosling. “Instead of budget holders spending 30 minutes revising their budgets, by using the ABS system they will only need to spend five minutes, significantly cutting budgeting time. We will also be able to review budgets in real-time 24 hours a day, seven days a week, aiding decision making.”
The document imaging functionality (powered by Version One) combined with the integrated workflow functionality will enable the paperless circulation, approval and storage of business documents. This will prove key to the College’s goal of becoming as paperless as possible.
Christine Gosling says, “Using ABS’ system, we will reduce the time taken circulating and approving paper documents across our eight sites. Staff currently spend far too much time paper chasing and so by freeing-up paper-based administration, they’ll have more time to deal with student queries.”
