Case Study 4. Direct-Effect

Case Study 6

This was a small charity whose administrative and accounts systems had been neglected for two years, such that the trustees and director did not know the financial position. Some funding bodies were beginning to complain about the poor quality of financial and monitoring reports relating to their funding.

Diana's first job was to implement an accounting system using Quickbooks, catching up the preceeding year and the first quarter of the new financial year. She helped find a new firm of auditors / accountants and ensured the audit was complete within 4 months of the year end. She meanwhile worked intensively with the senior management to understand the expected income and expenditure, and built a complex spreadsheet model which created not only a budget that the trustees could have faith in, but also an ongoing forecast that could be updated as the year progressed to show the likely outcome at the end of the year.

Whilst doing this work, it had become apparent that the IT and telephone systems were inadequate. The next couple of months thus saw Diana project manage the implementation of new systems in both these areas, from initial specifications to the comparison of proposals, negotiation of contracts, installation, ironing out of teething problems, development of in-house manuals and staff training.

Diana worked to improve performance through capability reviews, training and coaching, and oversaw the recruitment of new staff as necessary to ensure a team was in place with the skills needed to take over all the new systems.

Diana also undertook a review of all company policies and documented procedures, and developed an improved database to monitor the charity's work.