Best in Class Finance Functions For Authorities Forces

Police funding offers risen by 4.8 billion and 77 % (39 % in real terms) since 1997.
Nevertheless the times where forces have loved such degrees of funding are over.
Chief Constables and senior administration recognize that the annual cycle of seeking for
efficiencies year-on-year isn't sustainable, and will not address the cash shortfall in years to
come.
Facing slower funding growth and real cash deficits in their budgets, the Police Support must
adopt innovative strategies which generate the productivity and efficiency gains needed to
deliver top quality policing to the general public.
The step-change in performance required to meet this challenge will only be achieved if the
authorities service fully embraces effective resource management and makes efficient and
productive use of its technology, people and partnerships.
The finance function comes with an essential role to play in addressing these challenges and
supporting Forces' objectives economically and efficiently.
Challenge
Police Forces tend to nurture a divisional and departmental culture rather than a corporate
one, with individual procurement actions that do not exploit economies of scale. This is partly
the total consequence of over ten years of devolving functions from the guts to the.divisions.
In order to keep your charges down, improve efficiency and mitigate against the threat of "top
down" mandatory, centrally-driven initiatives, Police Forces have to set up a corporate back
office and induce behavioral modification. This change must involve compliance with a
corporate culture than a series of silos running through the organization rather.
Developing a Best in Class Financing Function
Typically finance functions within Police Forces have centered on transactional processing
with only limited support for management information and business decision support. With a
renewed concentrate on efficiencies, there is now a pressing need for finance departments to
transform to be able to add greater value to the force but with reduced costs.
1) Aligning to Pressure Strategy
As Police Forces need finance to function, it is imperative that finance and operations are
aligned closely. This collaboration can be extremely effective and help deliver significant
improvements to a Power, but in order to do this model, there are plenty of barriers to
overcome. Financing Directors must appear at whether their Drive is ready because of this
collaboration, but moreover, they must consider whether the Force itself may survive without

it.
Finance takes a clear vision that centers around its role while a balanced business partner.
However to achieve this vision an enormous effort is required from underneath up to
comprehend the significant complexity in underlying systems and procedures and to devise a
way forward that can work for that particular organization.
The achievement of any noticeable change management program is dependent on its
execution. Change is challenging and expensive to execute correctly, and often, Police
Forces lack the relevant encounter to attain such change. Although finance directors must
hold appropriate professional qualifications (instead of being former police officers as was the
case a couple of years ago) many possess progressed within the general public Sector with
limited possibilities for learning from and conversation with best in course methodologies. In
addition cultural problems around self-preservation can present barriers to change.
Whilst it is simple to get the message of finance transformation across relatively, securing
commitment to attempt bold change can be tough. Business instances often lack the quality
required to drive through change and actually where they are of outstanding quality senior
cops often lack the industrial awareness to trust them.
2) Supporting Force Decisions
Many Finance Directors are keen to build up their finance functions. The task they face is
convincing all of those other Force that the financing function can add value - by devoting
additional time and effort to financial analysis and providing senior administration with the
tools to understand the monetary implications of major strategic decisions.
Maintaining Financial Regulates and Managing Risk
Sarbanes Oxley, International Financial Reporting Criteria (IFRS), Basel II and Individual
Capital Assessments (ICA) have got all put financial settings and reporting beneath the
spotlight in the private sector. Therefore is raising the spotlight on monetary controls in the
general public sector.
A 'Best in Course' Police Force finance function can not only have the minimum handles to
meet the regulatory requirements but will evaluate how the legislation and rules that the
financing function must comply with, could be leveraged to provide value to the business.
Providing strategic info which will enable the force to meet its objectives is an integral task for
a leading finance function.
3) Value to the Force
The drive for development during the last decade roughly, has moved decision making to the
Divisions and has led to a rise in costs in the finance function. Through utilizing a quantity of

initiatives in a program of transformation, a Push can leverage up to 40% of savings on the

price of finance together with enhancing the responsiveness of finance teams and the quality
of financial details. These initiatives include:
Centralization
By centralizing the finance function, a POLICE can create centers of excellence where
industry best practice could be developed and shared. This can not only re-empower the
department, creating greater objectivity and independence in assessing projects and overall
performance, but also result in more constant management information and an increased
degree of control. A POLICE can also create a continuing business partner group to act while
strategic liaisons to departments and divisions. The continuing business partners would, for
example, advise about how the departmental and divisional commanders can meet up with
the budget in long term months instead of simply advising that the spending budget has been
missed for the previous month.
With the mundane number crunching being performed in a shared service center, finance
professionals will see they will have time to act as business companions to divisions and
departments and focus on the strategic issues.
The cultural impact on the departments and divisional commanders shouldn't be
underestimated. Commanders will get worried that:
oTheir budgets will be centralized
oWorkloads would increase
oThere will end up being limited access to finance individuals
oThere will not be on site support
However, if the centralized shared service center is designed appropriately non-e of the
above should apply. Actually from centralization under a best practice model, leaders should
accrue the next benefits:
oStrategic advice supplied by business partners
oIncreased flexibility
oImproved management information
oFaster transactions
oReduced quantity of unresolved queries
oGreater clarity on assistance and cost of provision
oForum for financing to end up being strategically aligned to the requirements of the Force
A Force that moves from a de-centralized to a centralized system should try to ensure that
the finance function will not lose touch with the principle Constable and Divisional
Commanders. Forces have to have a robust business case for financing transformation
combined with a governance structure that spans operational, strategic and tactical

requirements. There exists a risk that potential advantages of implementing such a change
may not be understood if the program isn't carefully managed. Purchase is needed to create
a successful centralized finance function. Typically the future potential benefits of greater
visibility and control, consistent processes, standardized management information,
economies of level, long-term cost savings and an empowered group of proud finance
professionals, should outweigh those preliminary costs.
To reduce the commercial, operational and capability risks, the finance functions could be
completely outsourced or partially outsourced to third parties. This provides guaranteed cost
benefits and may provide the opportunity to leverage interactions with vendors offering best
practice processes.
Process Efficiencies
Typically for Police Forces the focus on development has developed a silo based culture with
disparate processes. Consequently significant opportunities exist for standardization and
simplification of processes which provide scalability, reduce manual effort and deliver
business advantage. From rationalizing processes simply, a drive can typically accrue a 40%
reduction in the amount of processes. A good example of this is normally the use of
electronic bank statements rather than using the manual bank statement for lender
reconciliation and accounts receivable procedures. This would save considerable effort that
is involved in examining the data, moving the info onto different spreadsheet and inputting
the data into the financial systems.
Organizations that have a silo operating model tend to have significant duplication and
inefficiencies in their processes, for example in HR and Payroll. This is largely due to the
teams involved conference their own goals however, not aligning to the corporate objectives
of a business. Police Forces have several independent groups that are reliant using one
another for data with finance in departments, divisions and headquarters sending and
receiving information from one another and also from all of those other Pressure. The silo
model network marketing leads to ineffective data being received by the teams that then
have to carry out additional work to obtain the information required.
Whilst the argument for development has been well-crafted in the context of moving decision
making closer to operational program delivery, the additional cost when it comes to
resources, duplication and misaligned processes offers featured in the debate rarely. In the
current financial climate these costs have to be recognized.
Culture
Within transactional processes, a respected finance function shall setup targets for staff
members on a daily basis. This target setting is an element of the metric structured culture
that leading finance functions develop. If the appropriate metrics of quality and efficiency are
applied so when these targets are challenging but not impossible, this is confirmed to result

in improvements to quality and productivity.

A 'Best in Course' financing function in Police Forces will have a service focused tradition,
with the primary goals of providing a higher level of satisfaction for its customers
(departments, divisions, employees & suppliers). A 'Best in Class' finance function will
measure customer satisfaction on a timely basis through a metric structured strategy. This
will be coupled with a group wide focus on procedure improvement, with process owners,
that won't necessarily be the group leads, owning force-wide improvement to each one of the
finance processes.
Organizational Improvements
Organizational structures within Police Forces are usually produced up of supervisors leading
teams of 1 to four associates. Through centralizing and consolidating the finance function, an
opportunity exists to increase the period of control to best practice levels of six to eight 8
team associates to one team business lead / supervisor. By adjusting the organizational
structure and increasing the period of control, Police Forces can accrue significant cashable
benefit from a reduction in the number of team leads and team leads can accrue better
management experience from managing bigger teams.
Technology Enabled Improvements
There are a significant number of technology improvements that a Police Force could
implement to greatly help create a 'Best in Class' finance function.
These include:
A) workflow and Scanning
Through adopting a workflow and scanning solution to replace manual processes, improved
visibility, transparency and efficiencies could be reaped.
B) Call logging, tracking and workflow tool
Police Forces generally have several individuals giving an answer to internal and provider
queries. These queries are neither tracked nor logged. The consequence of this is dual:
oQueries consume considerable effort within a specific finance team. There exists a risky of
duplicated effort from having less logging of queries. For example, a query could possibly be
responded to for thirty minutes by person A in the finance team. Due to this query not getting
logged, if the average person that elevated the query called up again and spoke to a new
person then just for one additional issue, this may take up to 20 minutes to make sure that
the backdrop was appropriately explained.

oQueries can have got numerous interfaces with the business enterprise. An unresolved
query could be responded against by up to four distinct teams with substantial delay in
providing a clear answer for the supplier.
The implementation of a call logging, tracking and workflow tool to document, measure and
close internal and supplier queries combined with the setup of a central queries team, would
considerably reduce the effort involved in responding to queries within the finance divisions
and departments, as well as within the actual divisions and departments, and procurement.
C) Database solution
Throughout finance departments there are a significant number of spreadsheets utilized just
before input into the financial system. There is a inclination to transfer information manually
from one spreadsheet to another to meet the needs of different teams.
Changing the spreadsheets with a database solution might rationalize the number of inputs
and lead to effort savings for the front line Police Officers as well as Police Staff.
D) Customize reports
In obtaining management information from the monetary systems, police staff run a series of
reports, import these into excel, use lookups to match the data and implement pivots to
illustrate the info as required. There is significant manual effort that is involved in carrying out
this ongoing work. Through customizing reviews the outputs from the economic climate can
be setup to provide the data in the formats needed through the click of a switch. This might
have the benefit of reduced work and improved motivation for associates that previously
completed these mundane tasks.
In designing, procuring and implementing fresh technology enabling tools, a Police Force
shall face numerous challenges including investment authorization; IT capacity; capacity; and
procurement.
These challenges can be mitigated through partnering with an authorized service company
with whom the investment could be shared, the skills can be provided and the procurement
cycle could be minimized.
Conclusion
It is crystal clear that cultural, process and technology modification is required if police forces
are to provide both sustainable efficiencies and high quality services. In an environment
where for the very first time forces face actual money deficits and face needing to reduce
officer and support personnel amounts whilst maintaining current performance levels the
existing finance delivery versions requires new thinking.

While there a true number of barriers to be overcome in attaining a best in class finance
function, it won't be a long time before such a decision becomes mandatory. Those who are
ahead of the curve will inevitably find themselves in a stronger position.