PRESS RELEASE
OpenAccounts and OpenPeople Provide Strategic Support at DFS

March 22nd, 2007 - DFS, the leading furniture retailer, has implemented an integrated financial and payroll solution from COA Solutions (formerly CedarOpenAccounts). The new solution provides more effective support for the company’s business strategy because management information is more readily available and resources can be diverted from routine processing to value-added tasks.

DFS is one of the UK’s leading furniture retailers and a specialist in sofas. Founded in Doncaster in 1969, it now has 75 stores across the country. Originally called Northern Upholstery, the chain adopted the name of DFS following acquisition of the former Direct Furniture Supplies.

DFS believes that an effective business strategy requires good-quality financial information. Indeed, the analysis of business performance and the provision of new insights are viewed as the most important roles of the financial function. To put this philosophy into practice, however, DFS first had to implement a new financial management system.

"Our old system was not user-friendly in terms of supporting data manipulation and reporting. Our ability to derive good management information was limited, and we were heavily dependent on the IT department whenever we wanted to make changes," explained Bill Barnes, finance director.

The need to make a change became more urgent when DFS realised that its existing system could not support further business expansion due to fundamental limitations within the coding structures. Prompted by a decision on the part of its payroll software supplier to end support at short notice, DFS decided to implement a single integrated finance and payroll system. This would reduce processing costs whilst also simplifying implementation and support.

Strength in depth

Following a series of consultations, demonstrations and site visits, DFS chose OpenAccounts and OpenPeople from COA Solutions. According to Barnes, the technical strengths of this integrated solution were coupled with a clear commitment to continuous product development from an established supplier. Flexible integration capabilities were another key advantage, given the need to link with highly bespoke systems while causing minimal change to their existing file and code structures.

"From a systems point of view, COA Solutions stood out because of its chart of accounts structure and integration capabilities, as well as the fact that it offered both financial and payroll functionality," explained Barnes. "The strength in depth displayed by members of the COA team was also very impressive."

DFS first rolled out OpenPeople’s Payroll module, followed a few months later by core financial modules of OpenAccounts together with Enterprise Desktop Reporting (EDR) and the OpenLink integration module. The solution runs on a Dell PowerEdge 2800 server platform.

The implementation involved close collaboration between different DFS departments, including the IT department, and COA Solutions. According to Barnes, COASolutions' project consultants played an active role in the project from the initial planning stages through to rollout.

"COA Solutions responded quickly and professionally all the way to ensure that we hit our deadlines," he said.

The new solution takes care of all DFS's financial management and payroll requirements. Through OpenLink interfaces, it is integrated with the company’s retail and manufacturing systems and also with its Version One document imaging solution. Users can drill down directly from the Accounts Payable or General Ledger module to access images of invoices. Currently there are some 40 users, mainly in the payroll, purchase ledger and finance departments.

Important outcomes

Because the previous financial system provided little support for process automation, DFS was reliant for a long time on manual processes. This has now changed. Process automation has reduced the administrative effort required to perform basic tasks, and many process improvements have been carried out. For example, the payroll team has worked with COA Solutions to develop a net-to-gross payment process that allows easy payment of a net figure without the need for an iterative process to work out the required gross payment. This saves a significant amount of time during periods of peak usage of casual staff. Also, the ease with which data can be extracted into spreadsheets for manipulation, and then re-imported if required, saves a lot of effort during activities such as year-end closure and pay reviews. Integration between OpenAccounts and OpenPeople leads to additional efficiency gains.

These improvements have led to two important outcomes. First, DFS is able to direct resources away from transaction processing, system integration and basic reporting towards value-added tasks that support the business. Thus the financial function is able to contribute more effectively to the company’s strategic direction. Second, there have been reductions in overtime and agency cover, leading directly to cost savings.

Another key change is the ready availability of information about the financial performance of the business. According to Barnes, OpenAccounts’ user-friendly reporting capabilities, in combination with the new and more flexible chart of accounts, enable most management information to be reported directly from the system.

End-users have reacted positively to the introduction of the new solution, which they perceive as an immediate improvement in the way they work. The user-friendliness of OpenAccounts and OpenPeople has encouraged rapid acceptance and has given users the confidence to explore the capabilities for themselves. OpenLink, for example, is easily controlled by a financial user without any need for specialist IT knowledge. Thus users now have much more control over the quality of the data imported into the financial system.

"From the outset, we anticipated that users of the finance system would be able to shape it to meet their evolving needs, without having to rely on IT support," commented Barnes. "We are now seeing a situation where they are identifying unforeseen benefits and realising these benefits for themselves."

Long-term support

Barnes sees the relationship between DFS and COA Solutions as a long-term partnership that will enable his company to improve its systems and processes continually, and to find creative solutions to any issues that arise along the way. At the moment, DFS is investigating the possibility of implementing COA Solutions’s eBIS workflow solution. It also plans to upgrade to the latest version of OpenAccounts.

"The combined product offering of OpenAccounts with OpenPeople is a formidable one, and we are confident that it will continue to support us for a long time," said Barnes. "Most of our requirements are met by out-of-the-box functionality, and where this is not the case the products are sufficiently flexible to be modified with relative ease. In the latest version of the software, there is an even closer match to our needs, demonstrating how customer experience is contributing to the product development process."