Fáilte Ireland, the national tourism development authority, has implemented the Integra Financial Management System following its establishment in 2003 as a merger between Bord Fáilte and CERT.
Bord Fáilte was established in 1955 to promote tourism in Ireland, and CERT was set up in 1963 to co-ordinate the education, recruitment and training of personnel for the tourism and catering industries.
‘Fáilte Ireland was established on the same day that Bord Fáilte and CERT ceased trading,’ explains Deborah Nolan, head of finance at Fáilte Ireland. ‘We wanted to ensure that our new financial system gave everybody involved in the running of Fáilte Ireland a clear and concise view of its financial affairs. It was important that we made sure that any new system could cope with the complexities of our
organisation’.
Fáilte Ireland went with Integra because it wanted its financial management processes to make use of linked, standardised data that is easily accessible in its headquarters and regional offices. The system was implemented by iB Solutions which has expertise and experience in financial systems, project management and a knowledge of the public sector.
Integra is a finance system built on a standard client/server architecture and which encourages direct data input and online authorisation, thereby offering improved work flow handling. It provides a broad set of integrated functions, including budget planning and execution, general ledger, purchasing, payables
and receivables management, and cost accounting. Key features of the new system include online source data entry, workflow automation, robust reporting, and on-line query capabilities.
Fáilte Ireland brought in iB Solutions to map out the business processes and produced a document which allowed the tourist authority to implement the best practice model. ‘iB Solutions made the implementation easier for us,’ said Nolan.
‘We were guided through their findings and they set out the parameters on the system. It was an ideal time for us to update processes and make changes. They project managed the entire operation from consultation, installation, implementation, testing to training and on-going support services.’
Fáilte Ireland’s system integrates with all the main applications required to run the business. ‘The system provides our regional offices with reliable, cost-effective access to corporate applications,’ added Nolan. ‘Workflow is very advantageous for our organisation as it allows us to give non-financial people access to the financial system without having to log into it. It makes us more
efficient as it is controlled and prompts users to reply to e-mails.’
Fáilte Ireland is also using Crystal Reports software to handle its growing reporting requirements. ‘We now have far more flexibility to develop in-house reports that are Windows based, are very intuitive and much more user friendly,’ said Nolan. ‘We are able to create user-defined reports with graphics that can be exported automatically to Microsoft Excel.’
08/11/04
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