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One Stop opts for in-house control of its finance systems

27th Feb 2006
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One Stop, the convenience store chain, has completed a major rethink of its internal processes and brought the management of its financial management systems in-house. By implementing the latest version of CedarOpenAccounts' e5 solution, utilising its in-house system management skills and employing remote database administration services from CedarOpenAccounts, the retailer has predicted savings of over 40 percent on the full cost of ownership.

One Stop is a convenience store business with over 500 neighbourhood shops throughout England and Wales and employees over 6,000 staff.

Until recently, One Stop outsourced its financial management system management of CedarOpenAccounts e5 solution, back up's, recoveries, disaster recovery, hardware maintenance of the Unix operating system and its Oracle database. As the contract was up for renewal, One Stop decided to look at alternative solutions for its financial management system and the possibility of bringing its financial business processes in-house.

'We came to a crossroads with our outsourcing company and decided to look at alternative ways of increasing cost effectiveness in finance department operations. Even though we conducted a full evaluation process of alternative methods, we decided that the e5 software had already proven its merits by enabling us to run our profit and loss accounts efficiently for each of our 500 stores. This built on the confidence that already existed from working with the e5 solution for over 5 years. Compared to implementing an ERP system, the e5 software was by far the most cost effective choice,' commented David Anderson, I.S and Supply Chain Director of One Stop.

One Stop decided to bring the e5 application hosting and support in-house, along with the operation of its Oracle database. CedarOpenAccounts managed the re-engineering project and integrated the upgraded e5 software into the new IBM Linux operating system.

Since One Stop did not employ the necessary skills in-house, it now utilises the CedarOpenAccounts team's remote database administration (DBA) service for the continuous management of its Oracle database.
David Anderson, I.S and Supply Chain Director, 'We didn't have the skills set to support the internal management of the Oracle database, so we looked to the CedarOpenAccounts team to support us with this change. We also wanted to avoid recruiting an expensive skills set that would make us reliant on one person to deal with such an important aspect of our business operations. They were able to offer us a remote DBA service that was simpler and more cost effective to run, together with its broad experience and expertise in the Oracle database and specific integration with the e5 software.'

The re-engineering process to bring in-house its entire finance management system was completed at the end of September 2005, both on time and within budget. The benefits of running operations internally has already taken immediate effect with a more efficient and faster system. In addition, the savings on full cost of ownership, including the annual running costs, software and managed services have been predicted to be over 40 percent by the retailer.

'The CedarOpenAccounts team was exceptional in both its quality of work and co-operative attitude in managing the project. We work with a multitude of suppliers, but the CedarOpenAccounts staff stood out above the rest and has set a high standard of how to go about business. The team was prepared to go far beyond its agreed responsibilities in the project and was happy to assist in other problems outside its remit. We were continually impressed with CedarOpenAccounts' understanding of our requirements and ability to work well with our own team', commented Linda Straw, Business Systems Manager of One Stop.

Since the completion of the first phase of the project, One Stop has implemented the purchase-order processing module of the e5 solution. The retailer is also evaluating the adoption of the bank reconciliation module for implementation in 2006.

'Having successfully completed the upgrade and internal hosting of our finance systems, the next phase is to assess and improve upon our own operations ' how we can work better within the framework of the new system. We will look to the advice of CedarOpenAccounts to consider together these operational improvements and benefits to our working practices,' concludes David Anderson, I.S and Supply Chain Director of One Stop.

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