Friday 8 July 2011

FINANCIAL TRANSFORMATION

Sloane Business Management Consultants (SBMC) a division of Sloane International Investments Ltd (SIIL) provides business advisory and IT management consulting services to banking, investment, insurance, life & pensions and capital markets clients. Our consultants have a highly successful track record in converting strategy into realistic programme of change, and working with organizations to help implement practical solutions.
Our approach is driven by client demands and business imperatives. This is a necessity in an industry that must continually respond to regulatory initiatives while at the same time meeting the challenges of reducing costs, managing risk and enhancing the total customer experience, working in cost effective unison with a wide range of partners and product suppliers.
Sloane Business Management consultants is an independent consulting firm that understands the needs of clients in the financial services sector, shares their business aspirations and recognizes the challenges. Our consultants appreciate that in today’s complex business world, the best solutions are rarely available ‘off the shelf’ but come from experience, intelligent insight and creative thinking.
Sloane Business Management Consultants work in partnership with clients to supplement their management teams to assess situations, consider issues, identify options, plan change programmes and manage their effective introduction. Our services include:
  • Programme governance, including programme and project management
  • Electronic document and records management
  • Business/IT function outsourcing
  • Business transformation
  • Aligning business and IT strategy
Programme governance, including programme and project management
We provide experienced consultants to formulate and deliver major programmes of change, using established practices to align investment more closely to strategic goals, enhance accountability for change delivery, improve the realization of business benefits and manage risk more effectively. Our expertise in the financial services sector includes:
  • Programme managing the development and launch of new retail financial products
  • Conducting programme assurance reviews for a major business change & IT investment
  • Providing coaching and mentoring to banking staff to improve the effectiveness of their project managers
  • Undertaking a ‘project recovery’ exercise and restoring a major project to good health
Electronic document and records management
EDRM covers the management of information (both structured and unstructured) as a corporate resource, ensuring that appropriate policies and procedures are in place. Information management also includes responding to the broad regulatory requirements. We employ a large number of consultants who are EDRM specialists and offer formal training programmes using the highly acclaimed AIIM courseware. Our EDRM activities include:
  • Helping create enterprise-wide records management strategies
  • Undertaking a Document and Records Management project prompted by Sarbanes-Oxley
Business/IT function outsourcing
Our consultants assess the business function outsourcing opportunity and examine the viability of forming an outsourcing relationship. We assist with implementation, including the structuring of service level agreements and provide help in managing the outsourcing contract. Sloane Business management Consultants also provides ‘health checks’ and reviews of existing arrangements and offers support for the reintroduction in to the main business of a previously outsourced service. Our experience includes:
  • Implementing outsourcing arrangements for third party administration
  • Reviewing potential outsourcing arrangements for a major financial institution
Business transformation
We achieve cost effective and efficient methods of working by redesigning operational processes both within and external to the organization. At the same time our consultants normally review and determine appropriate technology solutions. This may involve straight-through processing to deliver cost savings by streamlining the flow of information from customers through sales channels to back-office and outsourced processes. Our work includes:
  • Performing a business process re-engineering project across all aspects of sales, document production, supplier interfaces, accounting and compliance
  • Defining new service level agreements and redesigning business processes between a financial services organization and one of its clients
Aligning business and IT strategy
Our consultants work with senior management to enable information and technology within the organization to work effectively together, delivering tangible business value. We are also skilled in helping improve the effectiveness of both development and production environments using frameworks such as CMMI and ITIL. Examples include:
  • Implementing a new quality management regime into a large and sophisticated IT organization
  • Improving the performance and effectiveness of a large-scale IT function by introducing significant process improvements


Enyinnaya Nnamdi
Sloane International Investments Ltd
C.E.O
info_sloanebizconsultants@yahoo.com

Fiscal vs. Annual Planning

Annual, or calendar, planning means preparing financial reports and forecasts to cover a calendar year, such as 2011. Fiscal planning means selecting a 365-day period, such as Sept. 1, 2010, through Aug. 31, 2011. While a firm technically could record historical financial accounts over one period but make future plans and forecasts over another, it is simpler and more common to use a consistent "financial year."

  1. Pros of Fiscal

    • A business that experiences seasonal demand may find fiscal planning more suitable. This is because the time it receives revenue from sales and the time it spends money to make the relevant products will be distinct and could even be in different calendar years. Selecting a suitable fiscal year makes it easier both to assign specific expenses to specific sales and to apply the lessons learned from one "cycle" for future planning.
    Cons of Fiscal

    • Using a fiscal year may make it more difficult to compare performance with other companies in a similar line of business that use either a different fiscal year or use the calendar year. This may be a particular problem for companies that deal in seasonal industries and want to see how well they performed against rivals over a particular season, or want to take account of their likely competition in a forthcoming season.
    Pros of Annual/Calendar

    • A sole proprietor may find the calendar year system simpler, as this usually allows him to calculate business profits or losses on the same time basis as calculating other elements of his personal income for tax purposes. Indeed, a sole proprietor or partnership usually has to specifically justify using a fiscal year to the IRS.
      A business that employs staff usually has to file annual wage reports for tax purposes on a calendar year basis. Using the calendar year for all financial records on forecasts thus streamlines the process.
    Cons of Annual/Calendar

    • Because January 1 through December 31 is inherently the most popular choice of a financial year, businesses that use external accountants may find it more difficult to get a quick service at a favorable price if they use the calendar year system.


Enyinnaya Nnamdi
Sloane Business Management Consultants
CEO
info_sloanebizconsultants@yahoo.com