How can LAMP assist decision makers?
LAMP is an established well proven system, having evolved from our consultancy expertise in conjunction with user feedback.
These are just some of the benefits that a LAMP system can provide:
- By modelling the management organisation (up to 10 levels can be accommodated), LAMP can define the component units (cost centres or business units) and establish the relationship between them thus allowing the true allocation of costs and charges
- Any changes in the organisational structure can be recorded by date of change allowing correct costing and charging, particular relevant with an organisation that may be subject to periodic structural change and which may be retrospective
- Identifies all the resources associated with a management unit (employees & non-human resources) together with their costs thus allowing a true assessment of their operational cost and that of the unit
- The total resource costs for the organisation and component units can be identified
- Identifies both the resource and overhead costs for each management unit facilitating budgetary build-up and analysis
- Facilitates and supports both retrospective actions and future forecasts for modelling and budgetary decisions
- Integrates employee cost, service cost and charging data with resource usage and business unit definition facilitating comprehensive reporting at unit and service levels
- Sophisticated overhead analysis and allocation for multiple business/cost unit operation
- Multiple overhead types using two bases of allocation allow full budgetary breakdown
- Multiple charge methods are available and a variety can be employed down to task level within services to achieve flexibility in charging policy
- System generation of invoices and credit notes to lessen administrative input
- Invoice generation utilises draft and issued procedures for management control
- Invoicing procedures utilises a reconciliation process facilitating accuracy for both management and client satisfaction
- Identifies services and tasks with management units facilitating workload analysis
- Identifies employee involvement with specific services for resource monitoring
- Identifies employee involvement with non-rechargeable and ‘frontline’ services thus allowing the ability to calculate ratios for ‘productive’ and ‘lost time’
- Service viability and monitoring reports for line management analysis and decision
- Assembly of services into user definable programmes of work (for analysis of client workload and achievements)
- Estimating and reporting tools provide data for forward service planning
- Maintenance of historic achievements for trend analysis and planning purposes
- Records employee work pattern for analysis
- Flexibility in operation to support organisational change
- Flexible data capture and output options facilitates usage
- Ease of use and customisation lessens external support dependency
- LAMP can be linked to a financial ledger system, e.g. to provide for direct billing, cost and charge data exchange.
A multi-user solution
LAMP can be made available to multiple Windows based PC clients over an existing network. In addition elements are available via web access (e.g. timesheets).
Ease of use and administration is a high priority within the LAMP system. Many LAMP sites have system administrators with little or no previous experience of computers beyond PCs and personal utilities.
LAMP operations are conducted from its own menu structure which is user configurable. The vast majority of operations are carried out without the direct use of the operating system, leading to a low level of external support. For example, the system configuration tools are comprehensive and can be carried out by staff with little IT knowledge.
LAMP is installed using MS SQL server as the host database.
LAMP is not dependent upon a particular hardware manufacturer, and the system is scaleable, allowing installation upon simple servers to multi-processor servers.
The provision of these comprehensive, yet flexible, functions for costing and charging operations enables both service and business unit viability reports to be generated and made available to managers at all levels leading to improved business unit management as a result.
The ability to review total costs together with the generation and analysis of ‘unit’ cost is of particular relevance where competitiveness comparisons are being made.
Even where ‘invoicing’ operations are not currently required the adoption of multiple charging options will enable viability to be calculated (pseudo-charging) allowing a comparative competitiveness assessment to be made.
In-depth analysis of employee work patterns can give managers the necessary data to assess the ratio between ‘productive’ and ‘lost time’. Both of these aspects can be compared to the expected ‘industry norm’ (whether public or commercial sector) to explore competitiveness ratios.
The deployment of the service costing and charging tools in LAMP promotes consistency and accuracy in both of these areas enabling ‘competitiveness’ to be assessed. All of these aspects are key features for public service organisations facing the challenges of the ‘Best Value’ initiative promoted by central government.