Carmel College is an educational institution in St Helens, Merseyside, that offers a range of academic and vocational courses to sixth form students aged 16-19. Providing A-levels, BTECs, and other qualifications, the college prioritises high academic standards, personalised learning, and creating supportive teaching environments.
The College also offers various extracurricular activities and enrichment programs to enhance the educational experiences of its 1855 students – the aim of which is to build a community of learning that encourages personal growth, critical thinking, and lifelong learning skills.
Carmel College first approached bluQube in March 2023 as its approach to management accounting was causing significant challenges. With its workflows requiring three separate reports to be run – a management set of accounts, a statutory set of accounts, and a balance sheet – this was primarily due to the time-consuming nature of their existing processes. Not only was this an extensive and time-consuming process, but errors were also encouraged due to the requirement for manual data entry.
The College is responsible for delivering a comprehensive monthly reporting suite – a process that required the finance team to rely on a word document filled with templates, manually key in data, and embed Excel exports into the document. Between having to run and download individual reports, then repeat the same process if adjustments needed to be made, this was a labour-intensive practice that was prone to inaccuracies. Instead, the team wanted a reporting system that was more focused on factual outcomes, ratios, and key performance indicators.
To streamline the finance team’s accounting processes, the organisation needed a system that would minimise manual data entry, allow it to implement updates with repetitive tasks, and produce high-quality reports.
Enter Report Pro – a live system that provides real-time, accurate data to be fed into reports. Rather than requiring users to manually run each report individually, automated processes enable the College to access updated figures instantly, while also ensuring only figures that are relevant to the College’s finances appear to avoid data inaccuracies.
With Report Pro implemented, Carmel College has been able to integrate its own KPI format and ratio analysis. As this means the team can now pull all necessary data from a single source as opposed to multiple sources, this has created significant time savings that enable the team to focus on the tasks that create the most value for the College.
Lenore Burgess, Finance Manager at Carmel College, says that Report Pro has been “transformational” for the organisation. While monthly reports previously took an entire week to produce, they now take just a matter of hours. As a result, this time saving allows the team to analyse data more thoroughly and avoid rushed conclusions. Additionally, the cleaner, sharper, and consistent presentation of the reports eliminates the need for users to sift through text-heavy documents or consistently hunt for figures.
We’re committed to ensuring that our customer service matches the excellent quality of our products. So, to streamline the implementation process and help key team members familiarise themselves with the new system, we provided one-on-one training sessions tailored to the individual user’s needs. Addressing specific issues and helping to build the team’s confidence in using essential programs and processes, Lenore commented that the training support was “invaluable” for exploring the potential of Report Pro.
With the software having generated vast efficiency savings for the College, the team are now looking forward to implementing further integrations and exploring the abilities of Report Pro even further in the coming months.
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