As an ex COA Solutions employee and having worked in a Finance Role before your post reminded me of when my first company a pharmaceutical company in the early 1980’s decided on a number of measures to preserve cash. We kicked off an audit of hardware to access depreciation and my job involved sticking black labels with codes on to everything I could find. I found several rented printers that were costing several hundred pounds each year but were no longer being used. We cancelled the contracts and no one complained. We then did analysis on the general ledger line by line to save 10% of spend. Its amazing what you find when you are looking - at the time I was locked in a room with my MD having a very fun week producing reports. We found the company had paid for mothers days gifts and appeared to have a very healthy investment in the local gentleman’s club. All these expenses were frozen and stopped. The entire exercise was run by Finance and the management team - no one was allowed to be excluded. We found by doing this no jobs were lost and the company survived that down turn. Action of course was the key and a healthy process focussed on Costs. Our spring did follow and the company was sold off in the end and eaten by pharmaceutical giants.

NB - The local club never recovered from its lack of investment I am told !

The COA Solutions blog just posted this review of The IT Value Stack. COA Solutions is the largest supplier of business accounting software, business management and information systems to the UK mid-market service sector. Many thanks for the review….