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Background

Police funding has risen by £4.8 billion and 77 per cent (39 per cent in real terms) since 1997. However the days where forces have enjoyed such levels of funding are over.

Chief Constables and senior management recognize that the annual cycle of looking for efficiencies year-on-year is not 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 Service must adopt innovative strategies which generate the productivity and efficiency gains needed to deliver high quality policing to the public.

The step-change in performance required to meet this challenge will only be achieved if the police service fully embraces effective resource management and makes efficient and productive use of its technology, partnerships and people.

The finance function has 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 activities that do not exploit economies of scale. This is in part the result of over a decade of devolving functions from the center to the.divisions.

In order to reduce costs, improve efficiency and mitigate against the threat of “top down” mandatory, centrally-driven initiatives, Police Forces need to set up a corporate back office and induce behavioral change. This change must involve compliance with a corporate culture rather than a series of silos running through the organization.

Developing a Best in Class Finance Function

Traditionally finance functions within Police Forces have focused on transactional processing with only limited support for management information and business decision support. With a renewed focus on efficiencies, there is now a pressing need for finance departments to transform in order to add greater value to the force but with minimal costs.

1) Aligning to Force Strategy

As Police Forces need finance to function, it is imperative that finance and operations are closely aligned. This collaboration can be very powerful and help deliver significant improvements to a Force, but in order to achieve this model, there are many barriers to overcome. Finance Directors must look at whether their Force is ready for this collaboration, but more importantly, they must consider whether the Force itself can survive without it.

Finance requires a clear vision that centers around its role as a balanced business partner. However to achieve this vision a huge effort is required from the bottom up to understand the significant complexity in underlying systems and processes and to devise a way forward that can work for that particular organization.

The success of any change management program is dependent on its execution. Change is difficult and costly to execute correctly, and often, Police Forces lack the relevant experience to achieve such change. Although finance directors are required to hold appropriate professional qualifications (as opposed to being former police officers as was the case a few years ago) many have progressed within the Public Sector with limited opportunities for learning from and interaction with best in class methodologies. In addition cultural issues around self-preservation can present barriers to change.

Whilst it is relatively easy to get the message of finance transformation across, securing commitment to embark on bold change can be tough. Business cases often lack the quality required to drive through change and even where they are of exceptional quality senior police officers often lack the commercial awareness to trust them.

2) Supporting Force Decisions

Many Finance Directors are keen to develop their finance functions. The challenge they face is convincing the rest of the Force that the finance function can add value – by devoting more time and effort to financial analysis and providing senior management with the tools to understand the financial implications of major strategic decisions.

Maintaining Financial Controls and Managing Risk

Sarbanes Oxley, International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), Basel II and Individual Capital Assessments (ICA) have all put financial controls and reporting under the spotlight in the private sector. This in turn is increasing the spotlight on financial controls in the public sector.

A ‘Best in Class’ Police Force finance function will not just have the minimum controls to meet the regulatory requirements but will evaluate how the legislation and regulations that the finance function are required to comply with, can be leveraged to provide value to the organization. Providing strategic information that will enable the force to meet its objectives is a key task for a leading finance function.

3) Value to the Force

The drive for development over the last decade or so, has moved decision making to the Divisions and has led to an increase in costs in the finance function. Through utilizing a number of initiatives in a program of transformation, a Force can leverage up to 40% of savings on the cost of finance together with improving the responsiveness of finance teams and the quality of financial information. These initiatives include:

Centralization

By centralizing the finance function, a Police Force can create centers of excellence where industry best practice can be developed and shared. This will not only re-empower the department, creating greater independence and objectivity in assessing projects and performance, but also lead to more consistent management information and a higher degree of control. A Police Force can also develop a business partner group to act as strategic liaisons to departments and divisions. The business partners would, for example, advise on how the departmental and divisional commanders can meet the budget in future months instead of merely advising that the budget has been missed for the previous month.

With the mundane number crunching being performed in a shared service center, finance professionals will find they now have time to act as business partners to divisions and departments and focus on the strategic issues.

The cultural impact on the departments and divisional commanders should not be underestimated. Commanders will be concerned that:

o Their budgets will be centralized
o Workloads would increase
o There will be limited access to finance individuals
o There will not be on site support

However, if the centralized shared service center is designed appropriately none of the above should apply. In fact from centralization under a best practice model, leaders should accrue the following benefits:

o Strategic advice provided by business partners
o Increased flexibility
o Improved management information
o Faster transactions
o Reduced number of unresolved queries
o Greater clarity on service and cost of provision
o Forum for finance to be strategically aligned to the needs of the Force

A Force that moves from a de-centralized to a centralized system should try and ensure that the finance function does not lose touch with the Chief Constable and Divisional Commanders. Forces need to have a robust business case for finance transformation combined with a governance structure that spans operational, tactical and strategic requirements. There is a risk that potential benefits of implementing such a change may not be realized if the program is not carefully managed. Investment 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 scale, long-term cost savings and an empowered group of proud finance professionals, should outweigh those initial costs.

To reduce the commercial, operational and capability risks, the finance functions can be completely outsourced or partially outsourced to third parties. This will provide guaranteed cost benefits and may provide the opportunity to leverage relationships with vendors that provide best practice processes.

Process Efficiencies

Typically for Police Forces the focus on development has developed a silo based culture with disparate processes. As a result significant opportunities exist for standardization and simplification of processes which provide scalability, reduce manual effort and deliver business benefit. From simply rationalizing processes, a force can typically accrue a 40% reduction in the number of processes. An example of this is the use of electronic bank statements instead of using the manual bank statement for bank reconciliation and accounts receivable processes. This would save considerable effort that is involved in analyzing the data, moving the data onto different spreadsheet and inputting the data into the financial systems.

Organizations that possess a silo operating model tend to have significant inefficiencies and duplication in their processes, for example in HR and Payroll. This is largely due to the teams involved meeting their own goals but not aligning to the corporate objectives of an organization. Police Forces have a number of independent teams that are reliant on one another for data with finance in departments, divisions and headquarters sending and receiving information from each other as well as from the rest of the Force. The silo model 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 made in the context of moving decision making closer to operational service delivery, the added cost in terms of resources, duplication and misaligned processes has rarely featured in the debate. In the current financial climate these costs need to be recognized.

Culture

Within transactional processes, a leading finance function will set up targets for staff members on a daily basis. This target setting is an element of the metric based culture that leading finance functions develop. If the appropriate metrics of productivity and quality are applied and when these targets are challenging but not impossible, this is proven to result in improvements to productivity and quality.

A ‘Best in Class’ finance function in Police Forces will have a service focused culture, with the primary objectives of providing a high 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 based approach. This will be combined with a team wide focus on process improvement, with process owners, that will not necessarily be the team leads, owning force-wide improvement to each of the finance processes.

Organizational Improvements

Organizational structures within Police Forces are typically made up of supervisors leading teams of one to four team members. Through centralizing and consolidating the finance function, an opportunity exists to increase the span of control to best practice levels of 6 to 8 team members to one team lead / supervisor. By adjusting the organizational structure and increasing the span 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 larger teams.

Technology Enabled Improvements

There are a significant number of technology improvements that a Police Force could implement to help develop a ‘Best in Class’ finance function.

These include:

A) Scanning and workflow

Through adopting a scanning and workflow solution to replace manual processes, improved visibility, transparency and efficiencies can be reaped.

B) Call logging, tracking and workflow tool

Police Forces generally have a number of individuals responding to internal and supplier queries. These queries are neither logged nor tracked. The consequence of this is dual:

o Queries consume considerable effort within a particular finance team. There is a high risk of duplicated effort from the lack of logging of queries. For example, a query could be responded to for 30 minutes by person A in the finance team. Due to this query not being logged, if the individual that raised the query called up again and spoke to a different person then just for one additional question, this could take up to 20 minutes to ensure that the background was appropriately explained.

o Queries can have numerous interfaces with the business. An unresolved query can be responded against by up to four separate teams with considerable 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 set up of a central queries team, would significantly reduce the effort involved in responding to queries within the finance departments and divisions, 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 prior to input into the financial system. There is a tendency to transfer information manually from one spreadsheet to another to meet the needs of different teams.

Replacing the spreadsheets with a database solution would 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 financial systems, police staff run a series of reports, import these into excel, use lookups to match the data and implement pivots to illustrate the data as required. There is significant manual effort that is involved in carrying out this work. Through customizing reports the outputs from the financial system can be set up to provide the data in the formats required through the click of a button. This would have the benefit of reduced effort and improved motivation for team members that previously carried out these mundane tasks.

In designing, procuring and implementing new technology enabling tools, a Police Force will face a number of challenges including investment approval; IT capacity; capability; and procurement.

These challenges can be mitigated through partnering with a third party service company with whom the investment can be shared, the skills can be provided and the procurement cycle can be minimized.

Conclusion

It is clear that cultural, process and technology change is required if police forces are to deliver both sustainable efficiencies and high quality services. In an environment where for the first time forces face real cash deficits and face having to reduce police officer and support staff numbers whilst maintaining current performance levels the current finance delivery models requires new thinking.

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

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He is widely recognized as one of the early pioneers of e-commerce, responsible for inventing, pioneering, and popularizing many of the technologies we take for granted today (including remotely-hosted ad tracking, electronic books, Integration Marketing, and more …)- One of his books (MindControlMarketing.com) shot to #1 within 36 hours of its release.- One of his websites became the 37th most visited website on the planet within 6 weeks of its release.- His pioneering ebook (Search Engine Tactics) was downloaded over 1,000,000 times years before e-books were common.- He turned a fledgling one-man operation into a multi-million-dollar International corporation with customers in every internet-connected country on the planet in two years time.Other Interesting Facts About Mark JoynerEarned a Bachelor of Science in Psychology through independent study while simultaneously serving in the U.S. Army in the Military Intelligence Corp (he speaks Korean fluently graduating at the top of his class at the Defense Language Institute).Is a cold-war veteran of military intelligence and a former U.S. Army Officer. 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Dan Kennedy, a Phoenix-based entrepreneur-extraordinaire has won international recognition as a “millionaire-maker,” helping people in dozens of different businesses turn their ideas into fortunesEntrepreneur Magazine says that Dan Kennedy has “at least 101 moneymaking ideas for any business owner.”Dan Kennedy moves with remarkable ease from one very different field to another, working with clients in 62 different businesses, industries and professions, earning as much as $250,000.00 in a single month providing unusual direct-response advertising and direct marketing advice, strategy, copywriting and marketing materials, video production and infomercials, and profit improvement systems.Kennedy’s clients include everything from sole entrepreneurs to huge corporations. Here are just a few examples – there’s the husband-and-wife couple who came to Dan with an idea, a mountain of debt, and failing advertising. Less than two years later, they have zero debt and a home-based mail-order business generating over $200,000.00 a month at about a 40% profit margin. Or, there’s the now-giant Guthy-Renker Corporation, famous for its celebrity infomercials with Victoria Principal and Vanna White, and its Tony Robbins infomercials. Guthy-Renker is a 200-million dollar+ a year business now, and Dan’s been a key member of their brain trust since their very first infomercial (Think And Grow Rich). Or there’s U.S. Gold, a company that has twice increased its sales by millions with Dan Kennedy provided marketing breakthroughs. And the list goes on and on and on.Kennedy is the “hidden genius” behind full-page magazine advertisements you’ve undoubtedly seen, direct-mail campaigns you’ve received and TV infomercials you’ve seen. In addition to all the advertising and direct-mail Dan prepares for his own products, services and businesses, there are hundreds of clients using marketing materials Dan has prepared for them. His full-page ads have appeared and do appear in magazines like Inc., Success, Entrepreneur, Moneymaking Opportunities, Nations Business, the airline magazines, the tabloids, USA TODAY, The Wall Street Journal, and countless trade magazines. One of his client’s full-page ads is now in its 10th consecutive month, appearing in over a dozen national magazines. In any given month, clients spend over 1/2-million dollars running ads, much more mailing sales letters, and still more airing infomercials that Dan has developed.And, Dan is one of the most popular, in-demand speakers on marketing-related topics. Ironically for a marketing guru, Kennedy gets almost all of his clients with no marketing! Some come to him after hearing him speak – in 1995, he addressed over 200,000 people, including audiences of thousands in many cities, in his 5th year on tour with famous motivationalist ZIG ZIGLAR. Others come after getting and reading one of his books available in bookstores, receiving his newsletter or listening to his cassettes. But most are referred to him.4. Joe Vitale is Founder & President of Hypnotic Marketing, Inc. He has written books for the American Marketing Association and the American Management Association. He wrote the only business book on P.T. Barnum, in There’s A Customer Born Every Minute. He also wrote The AMA Complete Guide to Small Business Advertising for the American Marketing Association. His most recent book, co-authored with Jo Han Mok, is The E-Code: 47 Secrets for Making Money Online Almost Instantly. Be on the lookout for his next book: Meet and Grow Rich!He recently created a software program to help anyone write better sales letters, articles, news releases, speeches and even entire books. It’s called Hypnotic Writing Wizard. He also has a brand-new membership program for those who are serious about learning marketing at HypnoticGold.com.Besides being one of the five top marketing specialists in the world today, and the world’s first hypnotic writer, Joe is also a certified hypnotherapist, a certified metaphysical practitioner, a certified Chi Kung healer, and an ordained minister. He also holds a doctorate degree in Metaphysical Science and another doctorate degree in Marketing.5. Dr. Jeffrey Lant has been a top achiever for a VERY long time. He published his first article at age 5. An afternoon newsboy, he started his own newspaper at age 10, sold stock and, yes, paid dividends! Even then media and communications intrigued him. This has never stopped!
Editor of his high school newspaper, editor of his class book, editor of the literary magazine, he also wrote a weekly column. That continued in college — and so did the awards accumulated along the way.Graduated with highest honors from University High School, Los Angeles, he graduated summa cum laude (one of only 11) from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Along the way, he spent his junior year at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, where he won the University Prize in Philosophy and became the first American ever elected to the Students Representative Council.At UCSB he became the University’s first-ever Woodrow Wilson Fellow and was actively recruited by over 60 graduate schools, each offering him full doctoral fellowships. He chose Harvard, where he also became a Harvard Traveling Fellow, Harvard Teaching Fellow, and winner of a Master’s Award for special achievement, en route to graduating with both a Master’s and Ph.D.Upon graduation he took a third post-graduate degree, the Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies in Higher Education Administration at Northeastern University, where he became the first student to cite his own published work (by now very extensive) in footnotes to his class papers.After a stint as Assistant to the President of Radcliffe College, Dr. Lant decided to set off on his own. He set up a consulting practice for non-profit organizations in 1976 and published his third book, Development Today: A Fund Raising Guide For Nonprofit Organizations. (Previous books had dealt with English Court ceremonial in the age of Queen Victoria. Entitled, Insubstantial Pageant: Ceremony and Confusion at Queen Victoria’s Court, Dr. Lant became the first American ever granted access to the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle. Another book, Our Harvard, dealt with the memories of eminent Harvard grads, including Dr. Lant himself.)Development Today launched a busy consultancy, international travel, workshops and direct assistance to hundreds of nonprofit organizations nationwide. It also spawned a series of how-to books that turned Dr. Lant into a millionaire and brought his detailed, hard-hitting, practical advice to people worldwide. (Click here for information about all of Dr. Lant’s books.)Along the way, Dr. Lant developed an internationally syndicated column carried by several hundred publications, a syndicated radio show on the Business Radio Network, and a string of special reports on specialized business- building subjects.So it might have continued but for the creation of the Internet and a series of eye-opening phone calls from George Kosch and Sandi Hunter, two Edmonton-Alberta- based entrepreneurs who were way ahead of their time. They persuaded Dr. Lant to come to Edmonton and see the future — the Internet — for himself.He did. And the rest, as they say, is history.What he saw in Edmonton, back in 1993, was that anyone, anywhere in the world with a computer and access to the Internet could transmit unlimited amounts of information to people worldwide. In a moment, the glimmer of an idea took form that is still being developed right now.This new technology opened the possibility of staying at home and helping people worldwide at little or no expense! As a result of that trip, Worldprofit Inc., a company which has opened the Internet to business people worldwide, people who want to enter and profit from new markets across the universe for their products and services, was born!These days Dr. Lant, still publishing articles just like he’s been doing for over 50 years, helps business people worldwide understand how the Internet can benefit them.6. Marlon Sanders, CEO of Higher Response Marketing, Inc. is a prolific internet marketer, with a dozen internet marketing products and services to his name. He uses his Master’s degree in psychology to great effect by writing great ad copy.Marlon’s products and services include The Amazing Formula That Sells Products Like Crazy, Push Button Sales Letters, Associate Program Marketing Handbook, Gimme My Money Now, Amazing Ad Copy Secrets Revealed, Create Your Own Products In A Flash, How to Automate Your Web Business, The Web Site Power System, Web Business Operations Manual, Secrets of Speed Publicity, The Cash Like Clockwork System, Daily Stats Software, and The Ultimate Beginner’s Guide.Marlon has spoken at over 120, $3,000 one-day marketing seminars and commands $1000 an hour for consulting. His reseller program for The Amazing Formula is one of the top-ranked systems on the Internet.7. Corey Rudl (1970-2005) was an American marketing strategist, and founder and President of the Internet Marketing Center. He was also an author, speaker, and software producer.Rudl started his first online business in 1994, turning it into a multi-million-dollar business based on Internet marketing. In response to the demand for his advice, Corey founded the Internet Marketing Center, where he taught techniques and strategies that stemmed from his own experience. His Internet marketing guide is sometimes described as the “Internet Marketing Bible”.Rudl’s articles appeared in publications such as http://Entrepreneur.com, the U.S. Small Business Administration’s -SCORE.org, the Direct Marketing Association, MarketingProfs, Opportunity World, Money ‘n’ Profits, Dig-IT Now, and Home Business Journal.Before beginning his business career, Rudl was a motocross driver, winning a 2002 Vancouver Molson Indy sports car event.On June 2nd 2005, Rudl was riding in a Porsche Carrera GT driven by Benjamin Miles Keaton, on a track that was also being used by a local Ferrari sports club. Keaton, trying to avoid a queued car, hit a concrete barrier on the passenger side, killing Rudl.8. Joe Robson, owner of “The Newbie Club” is a Brit and lives in the beautiful County of Yorkshire, England.He is responsible for the overall Promotion and Marketing of The Newbie Club, and is deeply involved with his team of Techies, Writers, and Designers on several unique and ground breaking Newbie Club Products and ServicesUntil he went online in 1998, he owned his own Direct Marketing company, and is a professional Advertising Copywriter with 30 years Sales and Marketing experience under his belt. He is widely acknowledged by many Internet Marketers as one of the Internet’s top Sales Copywriters, and his Copywriting Solutions Website is one of the most respected Web Copywriting Tutorial Websites on the Net.One of his strengths is his ability to reduce highly technical marketing copy, into easily understood Plain English. And he is a avid campaigner against the use of Jargon in writing materials. Hence the birth of The Newbie Club.His Copywriting and Internet marketing articles and Tutorials have been widely published across the Web, and he is the author of several books, including the Internet Copywriting blockbuster “Make Your Words SELL!” – MYWS – co-authored with Ken Evoy of MYSS fame.Joe is a Founding Member of iCop – The International Council of Online Professionals, the highly respected organization dedicated to protecting Internet consumers from the dishonest practices of unscrupulous Internet marketers. He is also a Member of the iCop International Advisory Council.9. Dr. Evoy is also the author of a series of widely-acclaimed “best on the Net” e-commerce books and courses for SOHOs (Small Office Home Office) and small businesses (1-10 employees) who sell (or plan to sell) products or services online. The SiteSell product line has empowered hundreds-of-thousands of people and small businesses around the world to succeed on the Web.A successful entrepreneur, Dr. Evoy has designed over 23 products that have sold internationally, generating 100′s of millions of dollars in revenues for various companies. He also developed several software products including one for the stock market sector.Dr. Ken Evoy is also a Canadian physician who formerly taught and practiced emergency medicine at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He was born in Montreal, Canada and holds degrees in science and medicine from McGill University.Dr. Evoy’s business philosophy is to offer the absolute best tools and information available on the market in the most accessible format and at the most affordable price. He feels strongly that every small business can be empowered to use the Internet to leverage their income-building potential — whether it is to build an e-business, grow an existing offline business, or create a secondary income stream.It is with this in mind that SiteSell has developed its breakthrough Web site-building, hosting, e-marketing solution that delivers real traffic and guaranteed results to novices and savvy pros alike. Some call Site Build It! “The Next Generation of Web Hosting.”Through Dr. Evoy’s spearheading efforts and fanaticism for quality and customer “OVERdelivery,” the SiteSell brand is highly-respected by top influential Internet business personalities around the world.10. Mel Strocen is CEO of the Jayde Online Network of websites. The Jayde Network currently consists of 12 websites, including ExactSeek.com and SiteProNews.com, two of the most popular sites on the Internet.”SiteProNews” an ezine for business owners and site developers containing articles and advice on how to get the most from your website. SiteProNews (SPN) has a subscriber base of over 500,000!”Another of Mel’s sites – GoArticles – is an immensely popular article directory where you can search for free content for your website.In addition to providing a great resource for webmasters looking to find free content the GoArticles site also provides authors with an excellent platform for promoting their articles. You can submit articles for free that will then be read and used by other websites owners.ExactSeek is a fast-growing search engine and directory and alternative advertising platform that receives over 30,000 new submissions daily.