Ramblings
Ramblings

Exploring Strategies for Effective Spending and Cost Control in Businesses

by The Steward

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=""][text_output]As a business owner, one of your main priorities should be to ensure that you are spending your money wisely and controlling costs effectively. But how can this be done? In this blog post, we'll explore strategies for effective spending and cost control in businesses, so you can make sure you're getting the most bang for your buck. Read on to learn more! Defining Effective Spending and Cost Control Strategies To effectively manage finances, it is important to have a clear understanding of where money is being spent and how. Taking control over spending can help to ensure that
Ramblings
Ramblings

The Case for The Steward – IV

by The Steward

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=""][text_output]The Steward also boasts a subset of our Business Intelligence solution, DynaCubes, a revolutionary tool giving you access to an almost infinite number of reports and queries, available at the push of a button. The full DynaCubes Business Intelligence Suite is also available as an option. In short, The Steward guarantees an excellent ROI in an “Office 2019” like environment; its users (Major Banks and Finance institutions) have reported up to 30% reduction in their administrative and telephone costs. Another feature included in The Steward, our “forms based auditing feature” releases your team and provide a complete audit trail,
Ramblings
Ramblings

The Case for The Steward – III

by The Steward

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text="Dealing with Third Parties"][text_output]Purchase orders waiting to be sent to your suppliers, internal consumption items needing to be delivered to your departments or employees also trigger alarms and alerts. These alerts are customizable and are very easy to setup. Another important module is the Enterprise Asset Manager, coupled with a sophisticated Computerized Maintenance Management System, allowing your team to procure assets, depreciate them, maintain them either in house or through a sophisticated Contract Management System. Looking for an end to the never ending spiral of maintenance costs, trust the Computerised Maintenance Management System of The Steward to allow your
Ramblings
Ramblings

The Case for The Steward – II

by The Steward

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text="Cost Control"][text_output]The Steward, our Cost Control Application provides your business with a solution to control and impute your administrative costs to the departments that have consumed them. It also offers as an option a complete Supply Chain Management to serve your staff base. The Steward boasts an entire procurement process, with pricing history and flexible category management.The cycle ends with sophisticated Accounts Payable and Treasury modules. By keeping track of expenses made for professional reasons, and those made for private purposes, recovering or charging the department of the person responsible for the spend is simple and straightforward. Time on
Ramblings
Ramblings

The Case for The Steward – I

by The Steward

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text="Your Administration Expenses"][text_output]Your business faces growing consumables, communication, assets depreciation and maintenance costs. Part of this expense is for services to customers while the other part is use by staff. Often, when consumables used are not controlled, a trend sets in your environment. People become less careful with items that are made available to use on an everyday basis. In addition, time spent on the telephone is a resource cost to your business. Staff may be spending time, responding to requests made by your customers. They can also be making personal phone calls during business hours. These overheads, if
Ramblings
Ramblings

Looking for the right question then listen to answers to previous questions

by The Steward

[vc_row][vc_column][text_output]Every once in a while a great ques­tion is asked, and the imme­di­ate reac­tion of people listen­ing to the con­ver­sa­tion will say:“That’s it! You have hit the nail on the head!” Strange thing is that the answer to the ques­tion is not forth­com­ing, it only opens the door to a bet­ter under­stand­ing of the prob­lem. It steers the con­ver­sa­tion towards uncharted ter­rit­ory, with excit­ing and unex­pec­ted end results. In a great book by Peter F. Hamilton, the Silfen, an elf-​like race, choose to wander across uncharted alien worlds on Paths. New paths open upon reach­ing a des­tin­a­tion, trans­form­ing their jour­ney
Ramblings
Ramblings

Les gens pensent que vous ne faites rien s’ils ne savent pas ce que vous faites

by The Steward

[vc_row][vc_column][text_output]People think that you are doing noth­ing if they don’t know what you are doing! A good friend of mine, not the talk­at­ive type, mind you, came up with this say­ing one even­ing I was com­plain­ing that very few people appre­ci­ated what I did. This encour­aged me to start this blog, to share what I was doing, and to talk about my likes and dis­likes. Although my job takes most of my time, I find it excit­ing to read — all types of mater­i­als — and be sur­prised by the nev­er end­ing ingenu­ity and some­times stu­pid­ity of man­kind. On this trail, I came across an inter­est­ing book by Richard Koch
Ramblings
Ramblings

Generic Transactions Part I

by The Steward

[vc_row][vc_column width="1/1"][text_output]In an ideal busi­ness world, doc­u­ments travel across the depart­ments with ease and mono­tony. We say that they flow. Unfortunately, things are nev­er this sim­ple. External factors, which are sel­dom under our con­trol, con­tinu­ously influ­ence our busi­ness. Our doc­u­ments have to per­form feats to reach their final des­tin­a­tion, and some­times they nev­er do. EXTREMELY SIMPLE SCENARIO Consider a very small dis­tri­bu­tion busi­ness. The owner’s only con­cern is to be able to receive goods from his sup­pli­ers and to sell these goods to his cus­tom­ers. In terms of the pro­grammes he needs to run his busi­ness we find that, in addi­tion to
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Ramblings

Generic Transactions – Part II

by The Steward

[vc_row][vc_column width="1/1"][button size="large" type="inverse" href="https://lesteward.com/generic-transactions-part-i/" title="Continued from..."]Continued from...[/button][vc_empty_space][text_output] Unfortunately, this was only the begin­ning. As com­pet­i­tion is get­ting fiercer, man­age­ment requires now the addi­tion of secur­ity fea­tures to the dif­fer­ent mod­ules. No cost price should appear in the ware­houses, and the goods receipts pro­ced­ure should be split in two steps: 13– The store­keep­er checks that the items and quant­it­ies are those that have been ordered, with no cost prices appear­ing on their ter­min­al screen. 14– The pur­chas­ing depart­ment then checks that the prices are in accord­ance with the pur­chase con­firm­a­tion they have received from the sup­pli­er. As the pur­chase con­firm­a­tion is still a manu­al
Ramblings
Ramblings

Predatory Mood…

by The Steward

[vc_row][vc_column][text_output]When Dalo, the pro­ject man­ager, received the call that morn­ing, she did not expect that it would last for so long. Frida, the IT man­ager at the hos­pit­al, was frantic: someone has been chan­ging the prices of pros­theses in some of the invoices sent to the insur­ance com­pany. How was this pos­sible? The billing applic­a­tion used an advanced access con­trol and secur­ity sys­tem. Before end­ing the call, Dalo prom­ised to invest­ig­ate the mat­ter and revert dur­ing the day. She put the phone down and worked her way through the work­flow. She was look­ing now at the screen that allowed the billing man­ager,