PS Financials supports Anglia Regional Co-operative to be 'good for everyone'

One of the largest consumer co-operatives is the Anglia Regional Co-operative Society (ARCS) which sells over £300m worth of goods per year and employs some 3,700 people. With over 100 stores, ARCS’ operations span sixteen diverse business groups ranging from furniture retailing and convenience stores to petrol stations and funeral care.

The group continues to grow and with this growth has come increasing business complexity. In 2009 ARCS decided to review its financial systems, which were unable to cope with the required complexity or workload. Overburdened by multiple business groups operating off disparate systems and across numerous sites, the system was in need of a major update.

“As our organisation was expanding exponentially and going multi-channel at the same time, the limitations of the Synon Financials legacy system based on IBM AS400, had become apparent,” explained John Shevlane, Financial Controller at ARCS. “Unable to deliver the right financial information at the speed we needed for making critical commercial decisions it was time to migrate to a more flexible and efficient system.”

“For an organisation of our size the new finance system had to have the power and flexibility of an enterprise-level solution but at the right price. We also wanted to partner with an integrator that had the knowledge and capability to connect the numerous diverse systems across our business.” The re-appraisal led ARCS towards PS Financials ­ a fully integrated and award winning accounting solution.

Upholding Co-operative values helped find the right financial software partner for the business

While the Co-operative is a commercial organisation it is renowned for the way it does business under the tagline ‘good for everyone’. ARCS put this philosophy into practice during this project. With advice from Grant Thornton “We benchmarked three industry-leading finance packages of which PS Financials was the standout offering. As a regional Cooperative organisation we are keen to support regional businesses, so it was an added benefit that PS Financials happened to be both a local vendor as well as the best financial software candidate available. Ultimately this would later reap benefits through the ease of deployment and support PS Financials was able to provide us.”

Fast delivery of quality information equals improved performance and profitability

PS Financials consultants assisted ARCS in replacing their core financial systems including seventeen interfaces to EPOS and other systems. Including the training of the staff, the whole project was completed in just seven months. The integration process, usually an arduous task, was greatly simplified by the PS Financials Data Transformation Tool (DTT). The DTT is now used by ARCS own staff to manage any changes and future integration requirements.

Of the implementation, John Shevlane says: “It was a tremendously quick installation and we were absolutely thrilled with PS Financials’ efforts given the complexity. They have been a capable enterprise level supplier with the level of intimacy you’d only expect from a local vendor.”

“The improvement in financial information is phenomenal. It seems that the more information we load onto the system the better it gets, which not only allows us to generate quicker reports but also allows us to access and drill down into commercial performance, reporting per location or department to the smallest detail,” enthused Shevlane.

“The reporting capabilities now mean we are able to better track stock movements, and therefore look more closely at margins to monitor efficiency and effective expenditure.” The system enables full budget control, department and cost centre analysis of financial and non-financial information. “The loading and budgeting of non-financial information has helped us develop the KPI’s for the business which are all reported from a single database”.

‘Good for Everyone’

Since the transition to PS Financials, a striking benefit has been the cost savings between the old and new systems. John Shevlane observed, “With PS Financials we have saved over £20,000 per annum in support costs alone as well as a circa 20% reduction in headcount 12 months post installation. As PS Financials support costs include them providing all new releases and versions free of charge, we have no future upgrade costs and so show a very high return on our investment”.

Better information and the automation of time-intensive processes have also freed up the finance team to focus on more strategic tasks such as new control procedures or the provision of more accurate, timely and meaningful management information to business leaders.

John Shevlane concludes that PS Financials gives his team the flexibility to access and analyse accurate information in half the time needed with the legacy system.

The cost savings and benefits of PS Financials have been so successful that the neighbouring East of England Co-operative is also implementing PS Financials as its core finance software solution.

Given the size and intricacy of ARCS business the decision to implement PS Financials has proven to be one of the most astute the business has made ­ demonstrating that PS Financials provides the functionality and scalability of an enterprise solution but at a fraction of the cost, which has been ‘good for everyone’.

Contact PS Financials today to find out how you can achieve more with the award winning software by calling 01733 367 330 or e-mailing .