Garden benches are so much more than a place to sit. Available in a wide range of materials it’s easy to find one that suits your specific tastes and needs. They also can not only serve to provide you with a great looking focal point, or garden accent, but also can be used to balance and even help define your garden space as well.One reason so many people love garden benches is that there is just such a huge variety. Most people only associate a garden bench with a metal bench yet don’t realize that there are so many different types available. A metal garden bench can actually be made from iron, aluminum, copper, as well as other types of metal too. These can be as ornate or as simple as you like. For a more natural look many homeowners go with a wooden garden bench. These can range from Oak, Teak, or Pine, to something like Eucalyptus. All of these can add a natural charm and appeal to your garden. There are also many different types of stone benches and a wide variety of plastic garden benches too. Whether you prefer a man-made or natural material there is something for everyone and every garden space.Garden benches are also perfect for providing a great looking focal point or even a more subdued accent to your garden. They work so well at both of these because of the huge variety available. Many homeowners opt for their bench to be their focal point which typically means an ornate metal garden bench, but the choice of material is yours. Depending on your garden there are many types which can work well to give you a focal point which not only matches the style of your garden but calls attention to itself as an object of beauty as well. And of course all the while providing you with a place to sit and enjoy your great looking garden at the same time. Using one to accent your garden space is just as easy because all you need to do is find a bench which goes with the feel, look, and style of your garden and you’re golden. Many homeowners choose to go with a simple stone or wooden bench as an accent to enhance the beauty of their garden because they are extremely good looking but also because they are simple looking enough that they don’t demand all the attention.Another reason so many people decide to purchase a garden bench is actually one which a large number of homeowners and gardeners often overlook the importance of, or don’t think of at all. And that reason is balance. So many people tend to work very hard on one aspect or area of their garden that they completely forget about the look of their space as a whole. This often means that they end up with one fantastic looking section in their garden but nothing else. A garden bench can provide balance to this space by making your garden look much more even and well rounded. An added bonus is that at the same time it can help to define the boundaries of your garden space too. Balance is always much more pleasing to the eye and will also make your outdoor space look exponentially better when viewed as a whole.With such huge array of materials and styles available which can provide you with a gentle accent or striking focal point it’s easy to see why so many people love garden benches. This especially true when they can provide balance and help to define your outdoor space at the same time. Who would have thought a place to sit could be so versatile?
Best in Class Finance Functions For Police Forces
Background
Police funding has risen by £4.8 billion and 77 per cent (39 per cent in real terms) since 1997. However the days where forces have enjoyed such levels of funding are over.
Chief Constables and senior management recognize that the annual cycle of looking for efficiencies year-on-year is not sustainable, and will not address the cash shortfall in years to come.
Facing slower funding growth and real cash deficits in their budgets, the Police Service must adopt innovative strategies which generate the productivity and efficiency gains needed to deliver high quality policing to the public.
The step-change in performance required to meet this challenge will only be achieved if the police service fully embraces effective resource management and makes efficient and productive use of its technology, partnerships and people.
The finance function has an essential role to play in addressing these challenges and supporting Forces’ objectives economically and efficiently.
Challenge
Police Forces tend to nurture a divisional and departmental culture rather than a corporate one, with individual procurement activities that do not exploit economies of scale. This is in part the result of over a decade of devolving functions from the center to the.divisions.
In order to reduce costs, improve efficiency and mitigate against the threat of “top down” mandatory, centrally-driven initiatives, Police Forces need to set up a corporate back office and induce behavioral change. This change must involve compliance with a corporate culture rather than a series of silos running through the organization.
Developing a Best in Class Finance Function
Traditionally finance functions within Police Forces have focused on transactional processing with only limited support for management information and business decision support. With a renewed focus on efficiencies, there is now a pressing need for finance departments to transform in order to add greater value to the force but with minimal costs.
1) Aligning to Force Strategy
As Police Forces need finance to function, it is imperative that finance and operations are closely aligned. This collaboration can be very powerful and help deliver significant improvements to a Force, but in order to achieve this model, there are many barriers to overcome. Finance Directors must look at whether their Force is ready for this collaboration, but more importantly, they must consider whether the Force itself can survive without it.
Finance requires a clear vision that centers around its role as a balanced business partner. However to achieve this vision a huge effort is required from the bottom up to understand the significant complexity in underlying systems and processes and to devise a way forward that can work for that particular organization.
The success of any change management program is dependent on its execution. Change is difficult and costly to execute correctly, and often, Police Forces lack the relevant experience to achieve such change. Although finance directors are required to hold appropriate professional qualifications (as opposed to being former police officers as was the case a few years ago) many have progressed within the Public Sector with limited opportunities for learning from and interaction with best in class methodologies. In addition cultural issues around self-preservation can present barriers to change.
Whilst it is relatively easy to get the message of finance transformation across, securing commitment to embark on bold change can be tough. Business cases often lack the quality required to drive through change and even where they are of exceptional quality senior police officers often lack the commercial awareness to trust them.
2) Supporting Force Decisions
Many Finance Directors are keen to develop their finance functions. The challenge they face is convincing the rest of the Force that the finance function can add value – by devoting more time and effort to financial analysis and providing senior management with the tools to understand the financial implications of major strategic decisions.
Maintaining Financial Controls and Managing Risk
Sarbanes Oxley, International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), Basel II and Individual Capital Assessments (ICA) have all put financial controls and reporting under the spotlight in the private sector. This in turn is increasing the spotlight on financial controls in the public sector.
A ‘Best in Class’ Police Force finance function will not just have the minimum controls to meet the regulatory requirements but will evaluate how the legislation and regulations that the finance function are required to comply with, can be leveraged to provide value to the organization. Providing strategic information that will enable the force to meet its objectives is a key task for a leading finance function.
3) Value to the Force
The drive for development over the last decade or so, has moved decision making to the Divisions and has led to an increase in costs in the finance function. Through utilizing a number of initiatives in a program of transformation, a Force can leverage up to 40% of savings on the cost of finance together with improving the responsiveness of finance teams and the quality of financial information. These initiatives include:
Centralization
By centralizing the finance function, a Police Force can create centers of excellence where industry best practice can be developed and shared. This will not only re-empower the department, creating greater independence and objectivity in assessing projects and performance, but also lead to more consistent management information and a higher degree of control. A Police Force can also develop a business partner group to act as strategic liaisons to departments and divisions. The business partners would, for example, advise on how the departmental and divisional commanders can meet the budget in future months instead of merely advising that the budget has been missed for the previous month.
With the mundane number crunching being performed in a shared service center, finance professionals will find they now have time to act as business partners to divisions and departments and focus on the strategic issues.
The cultural impact on the departments and divisional commanders should not be underestimated. Commanders will be concerned that:
o Their budgets will be centralized
o Workloads would increase
o There will be limited access to finance individuals
o There will not be on site support
However, if the centralized shared service center is designed appropriately none of the above should apply. In fact from centralization under a best practice model, leaders should accrue the following benefits:
o Strategic advice provided by business partners
o Increased flexibility
o Improved management information
o Faster transactions
o Reduced number of unresolved queries
o Greater clarity on service and cost of provision
o Forum for finance to be strategically aligned to the needs of the Force
A Force that moves from a de-centralized to a centralized system should try and ensure that the finance function does not lose touch with the Chief Constable and Divisional Commanders. Forces need to have a robust business case for finance transformation combined with a governance structure that spans operational, tactical and strategic requirements. There is a risk that potential benefits of implementing such a change may not be realized if the program is not carefully managed. Investment is needed to create a successful centralized finance function. Typically the future potential benefits of greater visibility and control, consistent processes, standardized management information, economies of scale, long-term cost savings and an empowered group of proud finance professionals, should outweigh those initial costs.
To reduce the commercial, operational and capability risks, the finance functions can be completely outsourced or partially outsourced to third parties. This will provide guaranteed cost benefits and may provide the opportunity to leverage relationships with vendors that provide best practice processes.
Process Efficiencies
Typically for Police Forces the focus on development has developed a silo based culture with disparate processes. As a result significant opportunities exist for standardization and simplification of processes which provide scalability, reduce manual effort and deliver business benefit. From simply rationalizing processes, a force can typically accrue a 40% reduction in the number of processes. An example of this is the use of electronic bank statements instead of using the manual bank statement for bank reconciliation and accounts receivable processes. This would save considerable effort that is involved in analyzing the data, moving the data onto different spreadsheet and inputting the data into the financial systems.
Organizations that possess a silo operating model tend to have significant inefficiencies and duplication in their processes, for example in HR and Payroll. This is largely due to the teams involved meeting their own goals but not aligning to the corporate objectives of an organization. Police Forces have a number of independent teams that are reliant on one another for data with finance in departments, divisions and headquarters sending and receiving information from each other as well as from the rest of the Force. The silo model leads to ineffective data being received by the teams that then have to carry out additional work to obtain the information required.
Whilst the argument for development has been well made in the context of moving decision making closer to operational service delivery, the added cost in terms of resources, duplication and misaligned processes has rarely featured in the debate. In the current financial climate these costs need to be recognized.
Culture
Within transactional processes, a leading finance function will set up targets for staff members on a daily basis. This target setting is an element of the metric based culture that leading finance functions develop. If the appropriate metrics of productivity and quality are applied and when these targets are challenging but not impossible, this is proven to result in improvements to productivity and quality.
A ‘Best in Class’ finance function in Police Forces will have a service focused culture, with the primary objectives of providing a high level of satisfaction for its customers (departments, divisions, employees & suppliers). A ‘Best in Class’ finance function will measure customer satisfaction on a timely basis through a metric based approach. This will be combined with a team wide focus on process improvement, with process owners, that will not necessarily be the team leads, owning force-wide improvement to each of the finance processes.
Organizational Improvements
Organizational structures within Police Forces are typically made up of supervisors leading teams of one to four team members. Through centralizing and consolidating the finance function, an opportunity exists to increase the span of control to best practice levels of 6 to 8 team members to one team lead / supervisor. By adjusting the organizational structure and increasing the span of control, Police Forces can accrue significant cashable benefit from a reduction in the number of team leads and team leads can accrue better management experience from managing larger teams.
Technology Enabled Improvements
There are a significant number of technology improvements that a Police Force could implement to help develop a ‘Best in Class’ finance function.
These include:
A) Scanning and workflow
Through adopting a scanning and workflow solution to replace manual processes, improved visibility, transparency and efficiencies can be reaped.
B) Call logging, tracking and workflow tool
Police Forces generally have a number of individuals responding to internal and supplier queries. These queries are neither logged nor tracked. The consequence of this is dual:
o Queries consume considerable effort within a particular finance team. There is a high risk of duplicated effort from the lack of logging of queries. For example, a query could be responded to for 30 minutes by person A in the finance team. Due to this query not being logged, if the individual that raised the query called up again and spoke to a different person then just for one additional question, this could take up to 20 minutes to ensure that the background was appropriately explained.
o Queries can have numerous interfaces with the business. An unresolved query can be responded against by up to four separate teams with considerable delay in providing a clear answer for the supplier.
The implementation of a call logging, tracking and workflow tool to document, measure and close internal and supplier queries combined with the set up of a central queries team, would significantly reduce the effort involved in responding to queries within the finance departments and divisions, as well as within the actual divisions and departments, and procurement.
C) Database solution
Throughout finance departments there are a significant number of spreadsheets utilized prior to input into the financial system. There is a tendency to transfer information manually from one spreadsheet to another to meet the needs of different teams.
Replacing the spreadsheets with a database solution would rationalize the number of inputs and lead to effort savings for the front line Police Officers as well as Police Staff.
D) Customize reports
In obtaining management information from the financial systems, police staff run a series of reports, import these into excel, use lookups to match the data and implement pivots to illustrate the data as required. There is significant manual effort that is involved in carrying out this work. Through customizing reports the outputs from the financial system can be set up to provide the data in the formats required through the click of a button. This would have the benefit of reduced effort and improved motivation for team members that previously carried out these mundane tasks.
In designing, procuring and implementing new technology enabling tools, a Police Force will face a number of challenges including investment approval; IT capacity; capability; and procurement.
These challenges can be mitigated through partnering with a third party service company with whom the investment can be shared, the skills can be provided and the procurement cycle can be minimized.
Conclusion
It is clear that cultural, process and technology change is required if police forces are to deliver both sustainable efficiencies and high quality services. In an environment where for the first time forces face real cash deficits and face having to reduce police officer and support staff numbers whilst maintaining current performance levels the current finance delivery models requires new thinking.
While there a number of barriers to be overcome in achieving a best in class finance function, it won’t be long before such a decision becomes mandatory. Those who are ahead of the curve will inevitably find themselves in a stronger position.
Top 9 reasons to plan your stay at the Taj Mahal Palace in Mumbai
Arriving and staying in the city of Mumbai is a very rewarding experience for the people especially if they are planning their stay in a very good quality hotel. There is no need to worry because Mumbai is a city that is inclusive of different kinds of hotels that are ultimately successful in terms of providing the people be top-notch quality facilities and features and one such great hotel is Taj Mahal Tower Mumbai. Staying into Taj Mahal Hotel is a dream of many people because of multiple reasons and some of those reasons why people prefer this particular hotel are mentioned as follows:
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The hotel comes with a worry-free experience for the guests: In case the people have to choose everything about the trip on their own for example transportation, stay and several other kinds of things then it can be a very tiring experience. But whenever one will go with the option of allowing the hotels to choose and arrange the transportation then one can enjoy a very worry-free trip very easily. The moment when the people will be walking outside they will find the hotel the person of hotel staff holding the placard and they will escort to the transportation being arranged by them. The hotel is very much successful in terms of enhancing the experience for the people so that all the guests can have a worry-free experience because this particular hotel always pays proper attention to the demands of the guests.
The welcoming experience is too good: The moment when the people will walk through the door of the hotel they will be witnessing one of the finest and largest hotel companies of India as well as Asia. Staying in this particular hotel is a very good experience and the people will be greeted with chilled towels, the tastiest non-alcoholic welcome drink, and the flower lei.
It comes with a high-quality museum and art collection: The hotel also pays proper serious attention to the best quality art collection and everywhere people will be looking there will be a masterpiece in the form of painting, sculpture, or artifact and the best part is that everything has been created by the Indians only. There are more than 300 pieces in this particular hotel and along with all these kinds of things; the hotel is itself no less than a tourist destination. Hence, whenever people will plan their stay in this particular hotel they will be availing multiple advantages in the long run.
The rooms are amazing: Every room comes with beautiful new interiors and there are different kinds of categories of rooms and each one of them is ridiculously beautiful. Every room has been designed differently so that people have a top-notch quality experience all the time. The architecture has been paid proper attention and the interior design provided by the hotels is amazing. Hence, whenever the individuals are interested in avail the advantages of best quality interior designing they must go with the option of staying into this particular hotel so that they can enjoy on the trip.
The food is breathtaking: The hotel comes with 11 restaurants and 24 hours of room service for the people. The on-site restaurants are many and they help in providing the people with different kinds of cuisine options, for example, Arabic, Japanese, Mediterranean, western dishes, Indian, Chinese, French, Italian and several other options so that taste buds of every guest are perfectly satisfied and there is no issue to any of the guests in the form of food items. Hence, the variety and flexibility provided by these kinds of cuisine options are top-notch.
The hotel comes with the best service in the industry: Taj hotels are well-known across the globe for the hospitality and services provided by them and Taj Mahal Tower Mumbai is also a very important member of this list. This particular hotel treats their entire staff very well and most of them have been working here for many years and are very much happy. The waiters serve the breakfast perfectly to the people and one will get everything which one normally expects at a five-star international hotel breakfast buffet. Hence whenever the people are interested to take the best possible advantage of top-notch quality hospitality and different kinds of services then depending upon staying into this particular hotel is very much important. To have proper access to delicious and authentic Indian dishes you must plan your stay in the Taj Mahal Tower Mumbai.
The hotel comes with a very good pool: Whenever the individuals are interested to relax and enjoy a good time with them then they can take complete advantage of the pool and several other kinds of facilities provided by the Taj hotel. Taking a dip in the pool is very much relaxing and the best part is that people can even go to the gym after it. Hence, this point is very much successful in terms of making the vacation the best possible experience for the people.
Everybody prefers to stay here: Another very important reason why you should plan your trip to stay in this particular hotel only because this hotel is the first preference of all the celebrities and heads of the states and many of them have already stayed over there. The list is very long and includes President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, John Lennon, Oprah Winfrey, and several other famous personalities. Hence, witnessing great interior and architecture is a great idea with the help of this concept and you must always fulfill your overall dream of staying it to a very lovely place by booking a room in Taj Mahal Tower Mumbai.
The location of the hotel is too good: The Taj Mahal Palace is located at the most famous landmark of the city which is the Gateway of India and everything else worth checking in Mumbai is only 10-15 minutes taxi ride from here hence, the prime location of the hotel is a great reason why you should prefer booking a room here.
Hence, for your next trip if you are planning to visit Mumbai then you must book a room in Taj Mahal Tower Mumbai to avail of all the above-mentioned advantages.