Case Study 4. Direct-Effect

Case Study 7

This was a commercial enterprise primarily involved in energy performance services and accreditation. The company was relatively young, and had never established good internal accounting systems. As a result, the records were rather a mess. Meanwhile, Diana came to the company just at the start of an economic downturn.

Much of the first 4 months was spent fire-fighting, trying to rectify internal systems and regain control of the finances. Then Diana researched and selected accounting software that would fit the bill. This included the need to build a bespoke order processing front end. In the end, Dimensions by Access was chosen, with a bolt-on called Focalpoint (a web-based form and process builder), the Dimensions CRM database and ADM (document management database).

Diana then project managed the implementation of the new accounts system in time for the start of the new financial year, including designing coding systems, training staff and documenting all the new systems, creating new management accounts in the form of spreadsheets with direct embedded SQL links to the data, summarised in easy to read formats.

Diana meanwhile had developed a forecasting tool, which was a model of all areas of the business to predict cash flow, profit and loss and the shape of the balance sheet up to a year ahead. The results of this tool were incorporated into the management accounts spreadsheet, so that for the first time, the directors could see how the business was performing against the plan, both in summary and in detail.

Diana also supported the management team more generally, chairing management meetings and starting to develop HR policy.