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

We built a product to meet the theoretical needs of an imaginary banker, how & why? (1)

by The Steward

[vc_row][vc_column][text_output]A few years ago, as we were devel­op­ing a soft­ware applic­a­tion for a major whole­sale and retail dis­trib­ut­or, I made a new friend, a guy named Gordon Saris. That’s him above. (Don’t look, he is pro­tec­ted by copy­rights; that’s why I had to remove his pic­ture from here.) And if you are won­der­ing if I mis­spelled his name, think again; I can assure you that this is what he is called. We should not be fooled by movie dir­ect­ors! Gordon acts like someone from fic­tion, but he sure feels real to me. His skills and exper­i­ence. The goals he has set for his insti­tu­tion. What parts of run­ning a bank he
Ramblings
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,
Ramblings
Ramblings

Why we decided to develop a different application? (1)

by The Steward

[vc_row][vc_column][text_output]I was being inter­viewed by an aud­it­or from the Central Bank con­trol com­mis­sion. She wanted to know what was the effect of chan­ging, without due author­ity, the interest rate of a factor­ing account on the monthly pay­ments of the cli­ent. The lady sug­ges­ted that the ques­tion would have been easy to answer if we had an audit trail for the data­base in place. (the Form based audit trail was born). Later on that month, all the might of the con­trol com­mis­sion was exer­ted when we had to handle the access con­trol to the applic­a­tion and the data­base. (Access con­trol was devised). During this peri­od
Ramblings
Ramblings

If I had a world of my own…

by The Steward

[vc_row][vc_column][text_output]In the clas­si­fied sec­tion of a daily news­pa­per an advert­ise­ment reads: “Old prob­lem look­ing for a way out”. If I find a solu­tion to that old prob­lem, do I become part of the “cre­at­ive” group of humans? If I spend time and energy, elab­or­at­ing this new solu­tion and then stop, will I have reached my goal? I would think not. The answer I have worked so hard to elab­or­ate needs also to be eleg­ant, uncom­mon, unique and should enjoy sim­ple qual­it­ies to con­vert and be adop­ted. I could have also come across a bril­liant idea acci­dent­ally and the eureka moment will then be at hand. When we look back