A system that could adapt
BFBS was restructuring, and its requirements were going to keep changing.
Customer story
Twenty-five years of accounting that adapts with BFBS.
BFBS has run its finance on DataFlow since 2001, chosen as the organisation refocused on serving the Armed Forces community. The system has changed shape with BFBS ever since, and now runs on Clarity, with authority-limit approvals routing purchase invoices to budget holders across the organisation, paperless.
“It does what it says on the tin. Everything about it is just easy to use.”
Industry
Armed Forces broadcasting
With DataFlow since
2001
Primary use
Accounting & invoice authorisation
Current platform
Clarity
About BFBS
Serving the Armed Forces community worldwide.
BFBS, the British Forces Broadcasting Service, provides radio, television, cinema, live events and news for the UK Armed Forces and their families, wherever in the world they are serving.
Behind the broadcasts sits a charity that runs multiple services and more than one company, with a deliberately compact finance team behind it all.
The starting point
A changing BFBS needed a system that could keep pace.
BFBS chose DataFlow at a time of change. It had sold off much of its commercial business to refocus on serving the Armed Forces community, leaving a small finance team with new requirements. The search began at a software exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham; several people were involved in narrowing the field, and DataFlow was the package that fitted best.
Multi-company, multi-currency
BFBS retained a second company, so both had to run in one system.
Easy for a compact team
With few people in finance, the system had to be straightforward to use.
Information that comes out
Copying information out of the system and reporting on it had to be simple.
“The product has evolved as we’ve evolved.”
The authorisation workflow
Department heads approve their own invoices, and the process is paperless.
The clearest example of the system adapting is purchase invoice authorisation. Working with the DataFlow team, BFBS built an approval workflow around authority limits: invoices route to the heads of department they belong to, who check the coding and approve within their own limit.
It was an extensive implementation, and a deliberate one. BFBS worked closely with the DataFlow team to build the routes exactly the way it wanted them, replacing a more cumbersome, paper-based way of handling invoices.
01
Authority limits
Approval routes are built around each budget holder’s limit, configured the way BFBS wanted them.
02
Approvals where the budget sits
Heads of department receive the invoices that belong to them and check the coding themselves.
03
Paperless processing
Paper handling has gone, an environmental gain as well as a practical one.
04
A more productive team
The workflow is quicker and less cumbersome than the process it replaced.
“It’s made an immense difference to our workflows. We’re more productive, and going paperless is another good thing environmentally.”
The move to Clarity
A planned move, built around authority limits.
Around a year ago, BFBS moved from the previous DataFlow platform to Clarity. The switch itself was straightforward: the product had been developed in that direction for some time, so the team knew the move was coming and could plan for it.
The real work was internal: designing the authority-limit approval structure that Clarity would run, including how purchase orders are raised in parts of the organisation. BFBS worked that out with the DataFlow team, and the migration went through without issue.
It is how the relationship has worked throughout. When the finance team needs help, DataFlow is a phone call away.
“They’re literally at the end of the telephone line. Anything we reach out to them with, they assist us.”
Life on Clarity
Eighty users, two companies, one system.
The core ledgers are still run by a compact finance team. Around them, though, the system reaches much further: BFBS’s licence covers 80 users and two companies, and many of those users sit outside finance altogether.
Approvals across departments
Budget holders use the approval module to check and code the purchase invoices routed to them.
Self-service, locked down
Subdivisions raise their own sales invoices, with access restricted to exactly that.
Reporting that comes straight out
Anything the team needs comes out to Excel or PDF, and management reports are built in Spreadsheet Live, DataFlow’s Excel add-in.
Wider access supports the way BFBS wants to work with the rest of the organisation: more business partnering, with divisions able to see the information that concerns them, while finance keeps control of what is produced for management.
For Gill, the biggest difference across the whole period is how easily information comes out of the system: “It’s very powerful. You can get out what you want.”
“I’m always analysing figures and drawing on that. The reports, everything, you can just get out to Excel, PDFs. It’s done.”
The verdict
Twenty-five years in, a ten out of ten.
BFBS now has an accounting system that has adapted through a restructure, a platform change and a widening group of users, supported by a team that knows the organisation inside out. Asked whether she would recommend DataFlow, Gill does not hesitate.
10/10 recommendation
“Without doubt, a ten. I prefer the layout of DataFlow against some of its competitors, and I would totally recommend DataFlow as an accounting system.”
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