Case Study: Farnborough Airport streamline operations with Access Financials
Farnborough Airport is Europe's market leader for premium air travel connectivity. What separates them from the competition is that they have a fully dedicated and integrated product and they're not relying on third-party providers.
Discover how they manage to successfully streamline accounting processes and fuel the growth of their organisation using Access industry-leading software.
The challenge
Farnborough Airport used an on-premise solution that required adding bolt-on products for updates and technology advancements instead of having one product that could grow with them over time.
The approach
Implementing Access Financials along with Analytics allowed the team at Farnborough Airport to create bespoke reports in Excel, and ensure the wider team has the information they need right at their fingertips.
The results
By streamlining and automating accounting processes and approval workflows, Farnborough Airport were able to eliminate manual tasks, saving them the equivalent to almost half a year of a person's time.
Customer Success Story: Farnborough Airport
What challenges were Farnborough Airport facing?
Farnborough Airport used to have an on-premise solution that required bolt-on products for updates, but implementing Access Financials and Analytics allowed them to create bespoke reports and streamline accounting processes, saving countless hours of manual work.
Tom Phillips, Financial Controller at Farnborough Airport says that, before implementing Access Financials, they were using an on-premise solution that couldn't keep up with their rapidly growing operations and ever-changing regulations, so they wanted to upgrade to a cloud solution.
"Because it was an on-premise solution, any sort of regulatory updates or any technology advancements weren't possible. We had to add bolt-on products and top-up systems rather than having one that could grow with the technology advancements."
What makes Access software the right choice?
While researching and choosing the right software wasn't a piece of cake for the finance team at Farnborough Aiport, Tom says "We went through a thorough process to choose our financial solution. If you're a business that doesn't want an off-the-shelf product that wants some more sort of bespoke nature but at a more off-the-shelf type cost, Access Financials is definitely a product I'd recommend."
In order to address their issues with their current on-premise solution's inability to adapt and grow according to their requirements, they decided to switch to our cloud-based accounting software, Access Financials, along with the Analytics module. This enables them to easily access all the necessary information whenever and wherever they need it, and add on features and products as their company evolves.
"Access seems capable of supporting our growth here at Farnborough. There are lots of modules that they offer which we've not yet utilised but have sort of potentially started to look at, for example, the people management payroll solution. [...] It's important when we looked at our financial solution and going through the process that it had the capability to advance in other areas of our business if required."
What were the results after implementing Access software?
"We've been using Access Financials since July 2023, so just over a year now. We signed our contract around January, so it was roughly 6 months from signing that contract to going live," Tom continues.
"Since implementing, it has allowed me to step away from some of those more regular processes and empower my team to take control of those. Having the sort of setup functionality to have different profiles and security settings has allowed me to ensure that the right criteria are set for different individuals. We've got sort of workflows with approval reports at month end that I can check which really ensures that I've got a controlled environment to ensure those regular processes are taken care of by my team."
"My favorite functionality within Access Financials is the Access-Office integration. As an accountant, I love using Excel so having the nature of being able to create bespoke reports in Excel that automatically sync with the system ensures that any sort of reporting is not prone to error and it's really quick to create so with Access Financials."
"What I do enjoy about the system and sort of more regularly use is analytics ensuring that the wider team at Farnborough has the information that they need at their fingertips."
Stephanie Younes, the Head of Infrastructure at Farnborough Airport says "I use both the operational side of Access and the capital expenditure side. In terms of the operational, I look at what costs I've got committed and what I've got remaining on my budget. Similarly on the capital expenditure side but with way bigger budgets and I need to go into a lot more detail on those because there are a lot more subcontractors involved and different suppliers so I tend to get more involved with Access when it comes to my capital expenditure project."
We have several invoices that come in that are rechargeable, around 10,000 of those a year, and being able to auto-approve those invoices via a workflow that checks whether the charges occurred has ensured that, if you take 5 minutes per invoice of entry, and approval works out equivalent to nearly half a year of a person's time.
Besides the great functionality and useful capabilities, Farnborough Airport's experience with Access software also encompasses an exceptional user experience:
"I find the user experience very friendly and intuitive it's quite a simple straightforward system to learn," says Stephanie. "We were really lucky with the implementation we had a really positive project manager I think it's key to communicate well," continues Tom.
What is the best part of Access software for the Farnborough Airport team?
Tom says that it's "[...] the visibility to see things quickly rather than having to download reports and check things — everything seems really sort of at my fingertips."
Stephanie continues, "Analytics has helped me keep track of my budgets. When I look at the budget versus the actuals that I've already spent versus the committed that I've already got and then I also tend to look at my remaining budget.
"The dashboard is very useful on Analytics because it means that I can adapt it to how I want to view it and all the different aspects that I want to see. You can drill down to each line when I want to which is very useful for me because I tend to I like to break things down into smaller aspects and look at the details rather than just looking at the high level."