Case Study - The Fashion Retail Academy

Background

The Fashion Retail Academy provides places for 200 students aged between 16 and 19 to study for a Diploma in Fashion Retail (levels 2 and 3). Its high profile training facility prepares students for work in the fast-paced fashion retail industry and was opened in September 2005 with a joint fund of £20m donated by the Government, and BHS and Arcadia owner Sir Philip Green. The Academy is located on Gresse Street, near Oxford Street in Central London.

Challenge/Requirements

• Automating finances for fast growth

• Wider access for budget holders

• Customisable reporting

• Integration with external systems

Unlike many similar training institutions, The Fashion Retail Academy was a brand new initiative that had only been operating for eighteen months, therefore all the financial and accounting procedures were being developed from scratch. The initial processes were developed using traditional manual techniques in association with computer spreadsheets. As the Academy evolved and more students enrolled, it became apparent that this system did not have the flexibility and capacity to handle new and predicted growth.

The Deputy Head of the Academy, Utkal Joshi, explains their dilemma, "As a modern specialist training organisation we recognised that although our current operation served us well initially, we needed to move to a professional automated financial system to support the future growth of the Academy".

The finance team researched the market and drew up a list of potential suppliers. After a detailed tendering process this was reduced to a short-list of three and these companies were invited to perform a formal presentation of their solution.

Solution

Joshi explains the selection process, "All three vendors, were competent in their basic financial processing, however we selected bluQube over the rest because overall it offered the best value for money, in terms of functionality and price. We liked the user-interface that was very intuitive and easy to use. It also demonstrated superior reporting capabilities, enabling data to be imported directly from Excel so that the Academy can customise reports for each department."

Results

bluQube enables the Academy to achieve what it was unable to do before, such as to integrate different applications into its finance system, gain more meaningful data from their accounts records and increase efficiencies across the Academy by involving staff from other departments in the finance process.

Since the new system has been installed, the Academy has expanded its financial operation from its previous 3 users, to 12 non-financial users.

Joshi comments, "At the moment we operate a centralised accounts function, however it is our intention to devolve some of this activity directly to the budget holders. With its self-service accounting features, bluQube will support this strategy and budget holders would then be able to view clearer reports".

The key benefits that have been realised include:

• An integrated flexible accounts structure.

• Enhanced reports that can be ‘customised' to meet the direct needs of the organisation.

• The ability to devolve more financial responsibility to departmental budget holders.

• A platform from which it can integrate into other systems such as student records in the future.

The Future

According to Joshi, the Academy now has a financial system platform from which it can build and add additional features and functionality in the future, such as e-procurement, and integration with the Academy's student record system.

He concludes, "The system has met my expectations and delivered on all its promises. The vendor, Symmetry, recognised that unlike many other training institutions, our users were new to a software-based financial system and took the time to ensure our staff were comfortable with using new technology."