Lights out processing for SunSystems

The concept of “lights out processing” is well known in the supply chain and logistics arena – it is the concept of day to day operations occurring at such a low level of human intervention that for most of the time the lights aren’t even switched on in the warehouse and the machines just go about their automated business in the dark.

This is the goal that Professional Advantage has in bringing an extensive suite of enhancement modules to the SunSystems world. What, however, does “lights out processing” actually mean when applied to the standard company finance department? To us it means achieving an 80% or greater rate of straight-through processing where transactions flow through their lifecycle from inception to completion with the minimum human intervention. The beneficial outcomes to this goal include the increased level of efficiency, the reduction in wasteful administrative costs and the freeing up of people’s time to focus on the 20% (or less) of exceptions that occur in the business and the strategic effort that actually adds value to the business plan and the shareholders returns.

How is this premise applied within our product suite? As some examples:

- raising a purchase requisition through to approving a supplier invoice – what can be done to automate and orchestrate the many process steps and business rules in that transaction path? iPOS for SunSystems delivers on this objective. The alternative invariably includes paper forms, intrays and, no answer to the “where is it” questions and extensive delays.

- Within cash management how can the tedious and administratively repetitive and error prone bank reconciliation process be sped up, automated and performed in an auditable way? Bank Reconciliation delivers huge improvements in balancing the bank account on a daily basis. The alternative is manual data entry and allocation with the associated risks of human error and delays.

- Management reporting demands a consolidated view of the distributed enterprise in a timely enough fashion to be able to respond rapidly to any warning signals. Consolidations for SunSystems builds a rule-set that summarises, normalises and centralises all the necessary SunSystems business units through a visible and auditable framework delivering a consolidated view of the enterprise for on demand management reporting. The alternative usually includes database level SQL scripts, inconsistent “black box” rules and un-auditable results.

Every company can benefit from striving for a "lights out processing" model in the financial administration layer of the business.

Bank your emotional credits early

I was chastised today for letting my blog entries lapse - time is a precious commodity these days and work, travel, kids, ill family members and handyman jobs have conspired to keep me away from the keyboard last month.

Another whirlwind week of business in London during Feb and another battle with the misery that is Heathrow airport. That place must be terribly demoralising to work in – it seems to suck the smiles out of people as they arrive – international travel has become a tedious and stressful thing since 2001 and it is made even more so by the surly, dismissive attitudes of ground staff.

In contrast some of the clients and business partners I caught up with are just brimming with energy and enthusiasm, ideas and innovations. It is amazing how the power of an individual can be magnified by a positive corporate culture.

I had three recent interesting conversations that led me to today’s post.

We have been providing training to some of our partners recently and one attendee was espousing how much better the experience was with PA than another organisation. Only wanting to beat our chest slightly, we are proud – and I think justifiably so – of our iPOS "boot camp" training, a lot of effort has been put into it by people much smarter than me. The comment was that we gave freely and willingly of information whereas getting things out of the other party was like pulling teeth.

We also have two large, publicly listed organisations using our Consolidations for SunSystems application who recently communicated their joy and delight with its functionality and operations. They both have achieved significant and tangible cost and data integrity benefits from the implementation to the point where they could now not easily function without it. Each of them have also requested enhancements and modifications to make it even better. Always on the lookout for good marketing I asked each if they would provide a "Consolidations from PA is great because ....." statement that we could use as a testimonial.

One turned a brilliant statement around overnight - a giver.

The other came back with a mealy mouthed "when you do what we have asked then we might think about it" - a taker.

In a previous existence I had the pleasure and privilege of having a smart and generous man as the business owner at a client. He called this sort of thing "emotional credit". We did a good job all month every month for his company year-in year-out and he constantly offered his services to us for case study and prospect references. He liked to bank his emotional credits early so that any time he did have a problem he knew there was a deep well of goodwill to draw upon to ensure a best possible resolution. And he was right, if the excrement hit the air movement device we pulled out all stops to deliver for his business.

Bank your emotional credits early. You get a whole lot more out of life.