The West Suffolk Hospital NHS trust selects Asset4000 from Real Asset Management to manage £87M worth of fixed assets

NHS Trust implements Asset4000 to centralise the fixed asset register and maintain IFRS compliance

The West Suffolk Hospital NHS Trust has announced the purchase of Asset4000 from Real Asset Management (RAM) to improve its management of over £87m worth of assets. This £20,000 order includes installation, configuration, training and data conversion.  Asset4000 will assist the Trust extensively with compliance to the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), which comes into effect for public sector organisations as of financial year 09/10, by providing a centralised asset register which can ensure the detailed level of component accounting required, streamlining business processes and enabling significant time and cost savings. As a fully integrated and automated asset register, Asset4000 ensures better management of information by delivering comprehensive audit trails and eliminating the need for multiple data input.

The West Suffolk Hospital NHS Trust serves a population of 275,000 over an area of 600 square miles in the UK’s south east. The Trust’s asset base is worth over £87m including land, buildings, medical equipment, furniture and IT equipment, all of which will be recorded at component level in order to maximise the amount and value of information on each asset, in line with IFRS requirements.  David Swales, financial service and governance manager at The West Suffolk Hospital NHS Trust, comments, “Ensuring IFRS compliance across such a broad fixed asset inventory as that of West Suffolk Hospital Trust involves complex reporting processes which require a robust centralised and fully automated asset management system.” Swales adds, “Asset4000 will ensure that we are compliant with IFRS and support our business requirements by providing information on asset utilisation and asset life cycles.”

Asset4000 controls, tracks and records all changes that occur within an asset’s lifetime to provide accurate, up-to-date and historical data from the point at which the asset was acquired. It allows users to benefit from customisable depreciation methods, comprehensive reporting facilities and the ability to import new assets from other systems. Swales explains, “Real Asset Management provided an ideal fixed asset management solution. The Trust had been using an outdated, inflexible system that did not meet the needs of the organisation we reverted to recording information on a spreadsheet which required repetitive data input, could not handle enquiries or easily provide an audit trail.” Swales continues, “As our requirements have become increasingly more complex, we identified the need for a robust system that could provide us with better reporting and remove the time consuming processes. After evaluating a number of other products, RAM offered the required combination of good quality software and value for money.”

Asset4000 will enhance efficiencies at The West Suffolk Hospital NHS Trust, allowing the finance department to easily provide reports to management teams about their assets and ensure that the Trust adopts a more practical approach to asset management. Swales comments, “Following the implementation of Asset4000, we are considering implementing other components of the Series4000 range of products that will support the business with project management, asset verification, modelling and forecasting.”

Swales concludes, “RAM has offered us the full package as a flexible, user friendly product with all the functionality we require from a professional organisation that has demonstrated a good track record within the NHS.”