Published on: Tuesday 20th January, 2015 New portal developed in partnership with Newcastle City Council offers improved efficiencies and security

Leading business applications and services provider, Advanced Business Solutions (Advanced), today announces the launch of Advanced Workspace, an integrated access management portal.

Advanced has developed its solution in partnership with Newcastle City Council. The Council is implementing Advanced Workspace into its existing Advanced solutions, e5 financial management and Collaborative Planning budgeting and forecasting, in addition to SAP HR & Payroll. The Council went live with the solution in January 2015.

Advanced Workspace enables organisations to increase operational efficiency and security by providing them with instant access to Advanced's financial management, eProcurement and budgeting and forecasting solutions from a single web-page. This eliminates the need to separately launch and operate multiple applications simultaneously. The solution offers further productivity savings by including quick links to frequently used screens and allows users to customise their own personal favourites.

An integrated data feed ensures financial tasks and notifications generated by Advanced's applications can be easily viewed and managed in Advanced Workspace, replacing lengthy email trails. Transactions, such as requisitions, purchase orders and invoices, can also be authorised from the solution's 'home page' without having to log-in to additional finance modules to speed up approvals.

The web-based solution's flexible sign-on functionality also strengthens security and minimises risk as users are only required to log-in once to access all of their financial applications. This results in fewer failed log-in attempts and considerable administration time savings by not having to create additional user IDs and password re-sets.

Dean Dickinson, Managing Director of Advanced Business Solutions (Public Sector & Enterprise Division), comments, "Busy finance teams are often burdened by having to operate several applications at the same time to carry out their daily tasks whilst also responding to endless transactional queries.

"Advanced Workspace significantly improves efficiency by providing a consolidated window into an organisation's entire financial management suite, which can be managed via a single sign-on. This removes the need to access underlying applications and reduces email traffic as task alerts are all available in one easily accessible list."Kevin Laing, Service Manager - Financial Accounting at Newcastle City Council, comments, "Advanced understands the pressure that public sector organisations are under to make efficiency savings and we are pleased to be working in partnership with them on this development project."

Advanced Workspace can be tailored to launch additional applications such as an intranet, external websites, a location on a server and performance management dashboards, enabling finance professionals to manage all of their daily activities from just one place.

Advanced Business Solutions is a division of Advanced Computer Software Group plc, a leading supplier of software and IT services to the health, care and business services sectors. In 2014, the Group won Tech Company of the Year in PwC's UK Tech Awards and ranked in the Deloitte UK Technology Fast 50, which recognises the 50 fastest growing technology companies in the UK.

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