Belvoir Castle - KEY Accounts and KEY Property user.

TThe 15,000 acre Belvoir Estate, situated between Melton Mowbray and Grantham, is managed centrally from the estate office by chief executive Donald Lambert and experienced agent Tim Stansby with a team including financial controller, Sandra Moran, and property manager, Margaret Trigg.

Donald Lambert’s 2007 appointment to a new role was a catalyst for a complete review of management and financial systems. Following accountant and client recommendations Landmark was asked to show the team how four sets of accounts, running on traditional DOS and Sage systems in different locations, could be integrated to give control of the whole business.

Nigel Parsons, Managing Director of Landmark Systems, was involved at the outset: “Belvoir is a large estate and we had to find the answer to providing good summary reporting on eight separate business units without losing the facility to drill down into cost analysis on individual enterprises. The key features required were accuracy, speed, analysis and control as this was an estate which was sharpening up its act by allowing greater access to shared information by a commercial management team,” he says.

KEY Advanced and KEY Property were ordered at the end of January 2008 with Sandra Moran joining Donald Lambert from the commercial sector to project manage the installation, with the aim of ‘going live’ by April. “My challenge was to bring it all together, to create a workable coding structure, to combine the four sets of accounts and to create a budget for the new financial year. Donald and the Trustees had to have regular reporting on the whole business to make meaningful decisions.” Sandra has worked closely on-site with Landmark’s training consultant Mark Wheeler, drawing on the experience of Mary Collis, Director of training, when necessary. “I am very pleased with the management reporting, particularly the depth of analysis which we can achieve through multiple analysis codes. We were running a duplicate sales pipeline spreadsheet alongside Landmark for events but we are gradually getting rid of this as we tidy up all the old style of information onto the new software.”

As well as continuing to refine the input and output of information for cash and trend management by Donald, Sandra is making information available for Tim, Mary Mackinley (Castle opening) and working closely with Margaret on the property side.  Margaret has noticed a dramatic change with regard to access to information on all the let property and estate tenancies. She says: “We used to operate accounts and property on a totally separate basis. There is a big improvement on how I do my job – I can open up the accounts system to check a figure whilst I am talking to a tenant. Before I had to ask a book keeper every time I wanted a piece of information.” Margaret and colleague Angie Hinch are gradually replacing manual filing systems, attaching photographs and copies of correspondence electronically to properties on the KEY Property software.

Donald Lambert has created a more commercial management style at Belvoir and is not disappointed with the achievement of Landmark. “I believe that we have 90% success and I would like to continue refining the system with Landmark to achieve 95%,” Donald explains: “I use my logistics background to iron out things like inventory waste. I have applied supply chain management, such as putting pre-set parameters into asystem so that suppliers cannot overcharge or double charge for items. I should be able to tell the bank to the penny how much money needs to be released on any one day.” Significant savings have been made at Belvoir through efficiency in areas such as stock levels, payment terms and conditions, and electronic banking. At the end of a day Donald aims to be able to tell the Duke and Duchess exactly what financial contribution has been made by the business at Belvoir, and as the system
beds in and historical information is added, he will use trend management skills to predict patterns
and activities in each of the business units. “We are still learning about the system every day but if something is wrong we can spot it quickly and make an early adjustment – this makes a difference to the overall success of a business.” Tim Stansby is also enjoying the easy access to figures and on-demand reporting. “You need to be on the ball to run a business these days and your information is only as good as the data that you put in,” he comments.

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