Finance

Cliff Mills, NCC Research Manager The IT department has not been immune to the economic uncertainties that have faced organisations in the past few years, whether in the private or public sector. IT has a pivotal role to play in aiding the streamlining of business processes, introducing operational efficiencies, and ... read more..

cloud computing The pros and cons of cloud computing may be regularly debated by the IT team but what about the rest of the business? How many financial directors (FDs) are still afraid to take the plunge? Most are familiar with the compelling benefits of lower capital expenditure, improved financial ... read more..

NCC Media ReleaseFrom the National Computing Centre, Manchester UK. 12th September 2011.A new survey from the National Computing Centre, The Benchmark of IT Spending and Strategy 2011 shows that UK organisational Information Technology (IT) spending remains in decline. A significant divide in IT spending between public and private sectors ... read more..

Media ReleaseFrom the National Computing Centre, Manchester UK. For issue 20th June 2011The majority of organisations are dissatisfied with the quality of information that they are able to produce from their finance systems. This is according to new research commissioned by the National Computing Centres Evaluation Centre service. (www.evaluationcentre.com).The ... read more..

financial data management It used to be the case that companies would have a different software package for each key function within their business. This inevitably led to a spread of information, a lot of rekeying, and due to the time it takes to gather information and compile reports, the ... read more..

Mobile devices are being used to prevent fraudThe growing use of mobile devices for a whole range of business and private applications provides many advantages. However, while we all appreciate the benefits of instant access to information on the move, there are often security implications that need to be addressed. ... read more..

21 October 2010 Log in to download the presentations for free We are delighted to invite you as our guest to share in the debate, opinions of our experts and experience of your peers about the state of the market today and what to do about it in these economic ... read more..

Metro Bank threw open its doors in the UK on 29 July with all the razzamatazz expected of a new entrant hoping to make an impact on both the media and prospective customers on its first day of trading. However, for all the glitz and gimmickry, new account holders might ... read more..

The vision of a cashless society will not be fulfilled in the foreseeable future. Cash is expected to remain the primary method of payment by volume. Consequently, competitive banks need to maintain or expand their ATM channels. However, this needs to happen with a strong focus on efficiency as the ... read more..

Canadian alternative equities trading venue Omega ATS has moved onto a newer, faster matching engine, which is the software that matches buy and sell orders in a given stock and thus is the core of any exchange or venue. This indicates that competition in Canada is still growing and demand ... read more..

Property and casualty electronic insurance exchanges have not had an illustrious history of success. It seems inherently reasonable that an industry that consists entirely of information and process flows would conduct its transactions electronically. However, arguments about customization of underwriting data requirements, fear of commoditization, and unwillingness to shoulder ... read more..

business driven IT investmentSeeking out the investments that support business challengesIn the depths of recession many businesses took traditional, reactive cost-cutting measures such as pay freezes and reductions in departmental budgets to get through the toughest parts of the economic winter. However, as we begin to see the green shoots ... read more..

From the National Computing Centre, Manchester UK.For issue 30th April 2010As companies struggle with uncertainty, both in the general economy and their particular marketplace, the finance department is facing increased demand for improved management information, cost reductions and efficiency savings. This is according to new research commissioned by the Evaluation ... read more..

John Lovelock, Chief Executive of FAST IiS (the Federation Against Software Theft and Investors in Software), discusses possible threats to the digital economy. The digital economy has received much publicity over the last year, and especially the last few weeks. The Governments Digital Britain Report has led to the Digital ... read more..

With unemployment, hiring freezes and redundancy dominating the headlines, its not surprising that many business professionals will happily say goodbye to a recession-dominated 2009 and look forward to a more positive 2010. The IT sector, like many others, was unable to sidestep the impact of a global recession, experiencing a ... read more..

Growing numbers of banks and financial institutions are adopting text messaging as part of a raft of measures designed to improve customer communication, enhance service levels and attain competitive advantage. However, the constraints of traditional text technology have limited the range of services that can be delivered to customers. Leveraging ... read more..

How do CFOs and FDs gain greater competitive advantage whilst minimising their companys costs? The National Computing Centre and ICAEW brought together senior finance executives and industry experts to debate this key issue. In most organisations the economic decision maker for large-scale IT purchases is the FD, CFO or board ... read more..

Results of NCC Member Question Issued 27 November 2009We plan to move our Trading Room to another building. Currently we have conventional PCs rack mounted in a comms room with a small remote box (connected to the PC over ethernet cable) on the traders desks providing display, k/board and mouse ... read more..

(Article taken from Management Guidelines 331 Future of the Desktop)The desktop computing marketplace is fast-paced, with an increasing variety of options for the delivery of information both within an organisation and the wider connected community. In facilitating this information, the way in which applications are installed and accessed has become ... read more..

(Article taken from Management Guidelines 330 Budgeting in a Recovering Economy) It will have escaped nobodys notice that this has been a tough year. Consequently, anyone who is in the process of or about to start the forthcoming years budget planning round may be considering the prospect with some trepidation. ... read more..

Research conducted by the National Computing Centre and Atos Consulting, the consulting arm of Atos Origin, has revealed that businesses are re-establishing growth agendas and are becoming ever more dependent on IT solutions to differentiate and remain competitive. This survey highlights that in all companies, large and small, legacy IT ... read more..

Within IT, code maintenance is an often overlooked area of misery and costs. Code maintenance is generally overlooked as the costs and potential problems associated with cleaning up old code can be huge. The industry sees their options are to leave the code as is and accept the massive code ... read more..

One of the most difficult challenges facing IT directors today is maintaining and upgrading legacy systems. Legacy is becoming a hot topic: research by the Gartner group show that the main concern amongst IT managers in mid-sized IT companies is integration with legacy systems.The Burden of Legacy ... read more..

The Erudine Behaviour Engine is an innovative technology for the generation and management of complex business rules. This paper examines how the unique benefits the engine can bring to projects requiring business data workflow management, and specifically Business Process Management (BPM) and Business Process Automation (BPA) systems.Unique Improvements to Business ... read more..

The problems and issues around requirements capture and management are well documented within the IT industry. It is the defects in the requirements definition process that very often lead to failure in the successful implementation of major IT projects. We would all contend that truly successful development can only take ... read more..

Programmes and projects are significant investments and key mechanisms by which business change is achieved. Yet many otherwise successful organisations fail to reap full value from this investment by not learning the lessons from this experience.Profiting from Experience ... read more..

Information lies at the heart of effective management. Not only are business executives accountable for the information published to the market, but effective strategic and operational decisions rely on intelligence derived from available data. Organisations need to have access to the 'right' data to improve competitiveness, grow market share, meet ... read more..

Given the significant costs and strategic value of IT, measuring its performance is at least as important as measuring the performance of any other key business function. Yet many organisations find IT performance measurement challenging, so they settle for measuring what they can - rather than what they want or ... read more..

Achieving successful alignment of IT with the business starts with reaching an understanding and agreement between business and IT about IT's role and business contribution. This will get senior management in both IT and the business, involved and accountable for IT governance, and support the board in setting direction. True ... read more..

Organisations recognise the need for risk management, and many purport to have it in place. Further investigation often reveals inconsistent and superficial processes for risk identification and management, and even inconsistent approaches to risk categorisation. Management is reassured by the belief that risk management is in place, as evidenced by ... read more..