Hi All,

Can anyone recommend business intelligence software that would be appropriate for small to medium scale enterprises?

For example I have a client who owns a fuel company with a number of service stations (11). They run a coupon system (sales & redemption, by litreage, cost, revenue, customer analysis etc) using a system developed using Excel VBA.

They are growing and naturally Excel isn't an appropriate software for such databases.

The final UN Global Compact meeting of the year focused upon Rio +20 UN conference on sustainable development, scheduled for June 2012.  The day the UK UNGC participants gathered in London, the announcement of the outcome of the Durban climate change meetings was still fresh.  After protracted negotiation a level of agreement was reached.  

Still thinking about time – as you might remember I have been mulling over what the term ‘long-term’ actually means.  Pretty important for an organisation like CIMA which sets great store by the creation of long-term sustainable success  and also when you consider the core theme of the CIMA World Conference in South Africa towards the end of this month (Business in tomorrow

In the past decade, there’s been a strategic shift in business management to embrace sustainability. The need for reporting and communicating the efforts being made has come alongside this trend.

Sustainability is no longer a voluntary part of business operations; a nice-to-have and “let’s do a bit of good on the side”. It’s become a business imperative with a focus on strategic implementation and sustainability becoming a way to create competitive advantage within the corporate workforce.

The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) and the Financial Reporting Council (FRC) have launched a consultation seeking views on a simplified reporting regime for ‘micro-entities'.

It is proposed that a micro-entity is a company or unincorporated business that trades for profit and does not exceed two of the three following criteria:

The Department of Business, Innovation and Skills and the Financial Reporting Council have published a discussion paper containing proposals to simplify the financial and corporate reporting requirements for 5 million of the UK's smallest businesses.

The UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has published a consultation document which seeks views on whether or not regulations should be introduced to make it mandatory for some UK companies to report on their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions within the directors' report.

The consultation sets out four options: a voluntary approach and three mandatory approaches.

Option 1 - enhanced voluntary reporting

The view over London from the 41^st floor of the HSBC headquarters in Canary Wharf was breath-taking and the clarity of thought that it inspired from the attendees at the launch of Tomorrow's Corporate Reporting was equally impressive.  Unlike many reports in this area, the focus of this research undertaken by CIMA, PwC and Tomorrow's Company is not on the ideal content of a corporate report but rather the barriers to the effective development of corporate reporting system.

The British Museum is an amazing place - well worth a visit if you are ever in London.  Describing itself as a museum of the world for the world, it has a bold global agenda to help us all understand the past and shape our future.  So it made a perfect location for the CIMA bi-annual Howitt lecture 'Global governance - time for a behavioural revolution' which was delivered this year by CIMA's Professor of Accounting and Financial Management at the London School of Economics, Wim Van der Stede.

The UK's Financial Reporting Council (FRC) has published recommendations aimed at improving the dialogue between company boards and their shareholders.

The FRC's report, ‘Effective Company Stewardship: Enhancing Corporate Reporting and Audit', responds to lessons of the financial crisis and builds on changes already made, such as the new UK Corporate Governance Code and the introduction of the Stewardship Code for institutional investors.  It contains seven key recommendations:

Hi,

One of our members has asked us the following:

The Fourth EC Company Law Directive (CLD) on annual accounts was amended in 2003 to require companies to include, where appropriate, information such as key performance indicators relating to environmental and employee matters in their annual report to the extent necessary for an understanding of the company's development, performance or position.

Hi, I am working for a charter operator and would like to develop my skills and knowledge with someone who can share their knowledge with me in relation to Aviation Accounting & Reporting.

If anyone has done any of the courses conducted by IATA, please send me more information about those. Thank you.

Warm Regards to my Professional Friends,

You might be aware that the Prince of Wales takes a keen interest in environmental issues.  What you might not know though is that, back in 2004, he established the Accounting for Sustainability Project (A4S) to develop the new approaches to accounting and reporting that are needed to ease the transition towards a sustainable economy.