Emap Plc

An international media company encompassing consumer and business magazines, radio and TV stations, websites and exhibitions generating a turnover of £500M.

In October 2000 Solus was appointed to assist rescue a stalled project, the objectives of which were to transfer the whole UK operations onto a common financial accounting platform. Computron had already been chosen as the platform, and systems design and end to end testing was at an advanced stage. However, the project manager had left, and the project was floundering.

At project completion 33 companies had been successfully moved to the new system.

In the course of the project Solus:

• Developed/tested/implemented some 6 interfaces between Computron and business critical sales order processing and credit control systems.
  
• Restored morale within the implementation team and generated the confidence of the system end-users
  
• Migrated and reconciled G/L, A/P, A/R and Fixed Assets data from three different legacy systems to the new platform
  
• Trained and supported some 200 users
  
• Achieved the revised budget agreed at our involvement on the project
  

From April to August 2000 Solus was involved in building a reporting structure for the newly formed digital division. This enabled the identification and consolidation of revenues and costs within the mainstream businesses that related to digital activities. The monthly information produced facilitated the management control of these new activities.

News Corporation

The newspaper division owns the Times, Sunday Times, Sun and News of the World, which generate a turnover of £700M. The main site at Wapping employs 3000 staff, with satellite sites in Glasgow and Knowsley.

Owing to a high staff turnover Solus acted as a general trouble-shooter over several contracts.

In addition to accounting, forecasting and budgeting routines, Solus

• Established a strong working relationship between operational managers (requiring on-demand support and information in a relevant and user friendly format) and the central finance function (needing timely and accurate reporting discipline)
  
• Reduced time spent in generating routine information by building visual basic driven spreadsheet models deriving automatic data input from the general ledger (SAP), and other databases
  
• Implemented practices to reduce physical inventories of spares and consumables and improve accounting and control of these assets
  
• Identified a number of systems problems and liaised with the IT department in their resolution
  
• Trained new staff and ensured a structured hand-over of responsibility prior to completing contracts

FSS Group

A £12M turnover, 80 staff recruitment company supplying permanent and temporary financial and IT personnel to client companies across all industry sectors.

The volume of business and professional headcount had increased dramatically over a short period of time without additional investment in support resource. As a result the existing management systems and procedures did not supply the information required to control and direct the business.

Solus achieved:

• A reduced monthly reporting cycle from 4 weeks to 10 days by changing working methods
  
• The design and build of a database/spreadsheet based budgeting system which reflected the revised operational structure enabling managers to plan and control their business units
  
• Worked with business unit managers to build a zero based budget
• Sub-divided the general ledger system (Sun Accounts) into some 30 profit and cost centres
  
• Interfaced the new budget system with the general ledger so that monthly management information was produced in the format required with flexed and static budget comparatives

Chelsfield Plc

A quoted property investment company with net assets of £500M generating a profit of £10M.

Solus was responsible for:

• The successful implementation of an automated accounts payable cheque run system. This saved the client three man days per month
  
• Training staff to adopt existing but unused computer application for delivery of Stock Exchange announcements
  
• Re-designing and testing a spreadsheet consolidation system in readiness for year end to reflect additional reporting requirements resulting from the groups diversification into leisure activities