Business Control Solutions launches BCS Integrity to improve financial control and reduce operational costs

London – Business Control Solutions (BCS), provider of management consultancy services and operational control software to the financial services sector, has today announced the launch of BCS Integrity. This new software offering improves financial control and reduces operational costs by managing and standardising account reconciliation and substantiation processes. By driving efficiencies across financial institutions, Integrity enables better decision-making.

Integrity is designed to reduce control costs while ensuring accountability, ownership and transparency in all financial services organisations, from smaller firms through to complex, global environments with multiple general ledgers and supporting software applications. It enables firms to communicate along the business chain and customise control points according to their needs, rather than a prescribed workflow. Data can be efficiently added, manipulated and consolidated, eliminating issues caused by disparate data systems as well as the need for qualified staff having to do time-consuming tasks. This in turn decreases the risk of human error.

“The issue of effective financial control is one that continues to plague the financial services sector,” said Eva Weber, analyst, Aite Group. “As business processes inevitably become more complex and regulations more demanding, it’s important that dedicated controls are put in place to deliver timely P+L and risk assessments, as well as accurate reconciliation, substantiation and reporting.”

“Most financial institutions still rely on Excel or Access for account substantiation, which involve too many manual processes, leaving too much room for error. This lack of control increases operational risk and is not sustainable on a cost or operational basis,” said Michael Bush, head of product development at BCS. “Currently, every finance director is living with uncertainty. By quantifying the uncertainty, Integrity puts them back in control and helps them sleep at night.”

Integrity provides an effective and controlled route for managers and financial directors to highlight concerns and generate accurate reporting across multiple regions, business areas, ledgers and currencies. Its account ownership and task completion tools ensure there is no ambiguity over the account status or the person accountable for it. By highlighting inefficiencies and mistakes in the reporting process, it allows users and management to communicate effectively and focus on high-risk issues, resulting in a more efficient, value-driven process. It also enables senior management to make decisions based on accurate information.

Firms can use Integrity to provide trend analysis as well as a constant, real-time view of progress. This includes out-of-the-box configuration to cover month-end processes, P&L exposure, progress forecasting and balance sheet briefs. The solution’s personalised dashboard provides objective visibility over the end-to-end business process. It can also incorporate feeds from different general ledgers and consolidate them into a single view.

Highly flexible and intuitive, Integrity can be customised according to business region, while maintaining a common architecture to further facilitate global reporting. It adapts to each firm’s specific requirements and business processes – avoiding the need to make internal changes to suit the technology.

As an out of the box solution, Integrity can be implemented in less than three months. It allows firms to focus resources away from development and maintenance towards more profitable projects, which can be easily quantified due to its transparent pricing model. As a result, it provides a viable alternative to costly, in-house developed systems. Moreover, this easy to use solution requires minimal training and ongoing technical support is provided by BCS.