Blackburn kicks off use of Great Plains for financial reporting

Football club builds on business intelligence resources with new Microsoft release

Blackburn Rovers Football Club is to introduce role-based financial management software to improve the way it monitors its business performance.

The Premiership club is one of the first users of the latest version of Microsoft’s financial management software, Dynamics Great Plains version 9.0, which improves access to financial data for management reports.

The club is testing the technology and hopes to have it fully installed by January. It will use the software’s portal capabilities to make its financial administration tools available to more staff and improve business processes.

‘Our use of this product so far has given us much better and faster reporting capabilities, on a much more stable and reliable platform,’ said chief financial officer Martin Goodman.

‘We are looking at integrating it with our customer relationship management system to allow us to link our management reporting into our internet and web sales information, too.’

‘Web and retail sales will have a relationship with the portal that will keep us ahead of customers’ and fans’ needs. Our retail channel is not run in-house, but should this change, the reporting integration gives us the ability to take on our own retail finance management needs,’ he said.

Barbara Hoyle, Blackburn Rover’s financial controller, says the club has used earlier versions for five years and the financial team was eager to use features available in interim releases.

‘We’re actually getting electronic requisitioning and expenses administration linked to the software, making key business and management indicators available according to key roles within the business,’ she said.