Member Article

Essex County Council appoints Advanced to support its finance management system

Essex County Council appoints Advanced to support its finance management system

15 May 2014 – Essex County Council (ECC) has appointed leading software and IT services supplier, Advanced Computer Software Group plc (Advanced), to host its financial management system, e5.

Advanced has signed a two year contract to host the Council’s financial data – which currently runs in e5 - in the ‘cloud’. This will enable information to be securely accessed from any connected computers at the same time.

The contract extends across the council and partner organisations, including Essex Cares and the Essex Pension Fund. Under the contract, Advanced will provide BACS processing and manage more than 1000 payment and collection files each year on behalf of the Council.

It will also provide other managed services including printing and mailing more than 340,000 documents per year including invoices, credit notes, dunning letters, cheque and BACS remittance documents.

As well as receiving a secure service, the Council will also benefit from the preferential postal rates Advanced has agreed with third party postal carriers which will help the Council to save money.

David Wilde, Director for Information Services, Essex County Council, comments: “Having all these services provided by one company makes perfect sense. As well as ensuring we can securely access our financial data across our networks, this contract will help us save money that we can invest in other services.

“We are anticipating significant savings as a result of choosing to work with a single supplier. As a public sector organisation it is essential to contain cost in order to provide local residents and businesses with the best possible value for money.”

ECC was recently announced as a finalist in the 2014 Real IT Awards. The winners will be announced at an awards ceremony taking place in London on Thursday 15th May 2014. The council was shortlisted in recognition of its work to form a partnership of public sector organisations impacted by the insolvency of their former managed services provider.

The partnership was formed to prevent the disablement of financial management systems used by multiple public sector organisations and hosted in the bankrupt company’s datacentre. Led by members of ECC’s IT Team, the partnership has successfully negotiated with company administrators to ensure the continuation of essential datacentre services.

Dean Dickinson, Managing Director, Advanced Business Solutions (an Advanced Computer Software Group company) comments: “The team at ECC are to be congratulated for forming a partnership that was pivotal in managing a particularly delicate solution that had the potential to disrupt many major public sector organisations. Their organisation and management of the situation was very impressive and they are fully deserving of their place on this year’s Real IT Awards shortlist.”

e5 allows organisations to track projects, create and monitor budgets and forecasts and manage procurement and credit control processes. The latest version includes significant enhancements, and offers a completely transformed user experience. The new HTML5 user interface means that employees can manage and report their financial activity from mobile devices such as smartphones and iPads. The system is also available in the public or private cloud, which can offer a more cost effective and flexible option depending on customer requirements.

e5 can be deployed quickly using the fast track implementation approach and is easily tailored to an organisation’s needs. The system has become the de facto standard for enterprise-scale accounting software in the UK’s retail, local government, higher education, financial services and airline sectors.

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Note to editors

About Advanced Computer Software Group plc www.advancedcomputersoftware.com

Advanced Computer Software Group plc (Advanced) is a leading supplier of software and IT services to both public and private sectors which assist organisations to improve efficiency and reduce costs.

The Group operates as three divisions: Advanced Health & Care sells a range of products to the NHS and private healthcare sector including patient workflow management for urgent and unplanned care providers; patient case management for social care providers; mobile applications for care in the community providers and rostering applications for social care settings.

Advanced Business Solutions provides accounting, payroll, HR, CRM and document management solutions to local authorities, healthcare organisations, law firms and private sector businesses including banks, manufacturers, retailers, charities and travel companies.

Advanced 365 delivers managed services to support Group products and to a wide range of customers including banks and financial institutions, membership bodies and healthcare organisations. Services can be delivered either on-premise or as cloud-based models depending on customers’ requirements.

For further information, interviews and photography contact:

Liz Ebbrell and Nick Hardy, Advanced Computer Software Group

pr@advancedcomputersoftware.com 01625 856 513/07917 634 705

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Advanced .