Ecclesiastical Insurance Group Expands Accounting Capabilities with PS Financials

Specialist insurance and financial services provider implements PS Financials accounting and business management software solution.

Having forged an enviable reputation as a specialist provider of general insurance to independent schools, care homes, nursery schools, charities and churches in the UK, Ecclesiastical Insurance Group also offers a range of financial services to the general public, including, investments, pensions, life assurance and mortgages.

Associated services include commercial package insurance for surgeries, nurseries and offices.

Headquartered in Gloucester, UK, Ecclesiastical was recently rated as being in a position of 'excellent' financial strength by AM Best, a worldwide insurance rating and information agency.

Ecclesiastical boasts seven regional underwriting centres across the UK including those based in Birmingham, London and Manchester, and offices in Ireland, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The company is also ranked in the top ten of UK-based corporate charity donors, pledging almost £5m annually.

Ecclesiastical employs more than 900 staff in the UK alone. Its finance department, which is located in its Gloucester office, is staffed by 72 employees.

Choosing PS Financials

Prior to implementing PS Financials accounting and business management system, Ecclesiastical had utilised a software package developed by QSP Group, the former Newcastle, UK-based vendor.

According to Les Fowler, Head of Finance Operations for Ecclesiastical, QSP's demise prompted the insurer to accelerate the process of identifying a suitable replacement for the QSP system, which they had been using since 1989.

"We identified software packages from a variety of vendors in addition to PS Financials, including Navision (Microsoft), Coda Group and Sage," says Les. "We narrowed the field to PS Financials and Coda Group, before settling on the former, mainly because of the inherent user-friendliness of the PS Financials software package."

Working with PS Financials

Les says that PS Financials readily accepted the challenge of tailoring the software package to meet the unique demands set down by Ecclesiastical's finance department.

"PS Financials provided us with a customised solution specifically suited to our business," she says. "As an insurer, we make a lot of one-off payments to single clients, and PS Financials provided us with software facilities to enable this. This capability was not originally available in the system, but PS Financials made it happen."

Les also acknowledges the support Ecclesiastical has received from PS Financials in the period post-implementation.

"We have a very close working relationship with PS Financials. They've provided great support which has shown through in terms of the technical guidance and training support we've received post-implementation," she says.

Gains with PS Financials

Les explains that since the launch of the PS Financials solution in November 2003, Ecclesiastical's finance department has achieved significant gains in terms of time and cost savings.

"The PS Financials software has streamlined all of our processes significantly," she says.

"The software enables us to create in-depth reports of all our finance accountancy information and procedures quickly and accurately. The software recognises new information via data entry and updates the database in real-time accordingly. This information can then be used to create very thorough financial reports."

"The system also allows us to access profit and loss statistics online for each of our product lines which we couldn't do before."

"Our Gloucester-based group credit management team recently won Credit Management Team of the Year 2004 and the statements produced from PS Financials software were part of our winning submission".

Les cites the software's "intrinsic flexibility" and "ease of use" as two of its greatest qualities. She also praises its Web Portal-based 'Self Service' capability, which enables employees to view and input data in a format of their selection using PS Financials User Defined Input (UDI) capability. Les explains that Ecclesiastical primarily utilises this option for authorising orders within its UK network of offices.

Using PS Financials

"A key reason we selected PS Financials software was its user-friendly look and feel," she says. "This has encouraged our budget holders to use the system en masse."

"From a budget holder's perspective, they are not required to know any codes to operate the system. The system allows us to set up security parameters, which restricts user access to critical information and also ensures simplified access for multiple users."

"This is a major benefit the PS Financials' system boasts over the previous QSP software, which required a raft of user codes to access information and which was also Unix-based, which provided its own set of challenges compared to PS Financials' simple Windows-based interface."

The future with PS Financials

With the company now successfully leveraging the capabilities of the PS Financials software in its UK and Ireland offices and having recently launched the software in its Toronto, Canada office, Les says Ecclesiastical's finance department is now well-placed to meet the company's future finance accounting and business management demands.

"Our business is continually growing and evolving," she says. "The fact that the PS Financials accounting and business management solution streamlines our accounts management processes, and that we have an excellent 'business partner' relationship will help us to address any future challenges."