The Jewish Chronicle

Company Snapshot

Sector
Publishing 

Number of iplicit users
Full users: 4

Previous System
Midrange/Global

Go Live
January 2022

Website
www.thejc.com

Objectives
To have a better overview of the business performance and save time.

The Jewish Chronicle goes paperless by investing in a new finance system

The Jewish Chronicle is the world’s oldest newspaper for the Jewish community, enjoying a reputation for agenda-setting news coverage, investigations, features and opinion columns. It invested in a new finance system after the historic title was acquired by new owners. 

Anna Nemchinova, the publisher’s Finance Director, told how in April 2020 she led the business to iplicit, which she hoped would give her a much better oversight of the business’s performance as well as saving large amounts of staff time. 

“The old system was inadequate and that's what initiated the search for the new provider,” she says.

‘iplicit gave us the simplicity we needed’ 

The old on-premise finance system had been in place for more than 20 years. “It wasn’t user-friendly. It was difficult to extract any information, there was no visibility, and everything took you 10 steps to get somewhere,” Anna says. 

“We did extensive research on various systems. I think we looked at about five to seven different systems. 

“We looked at systems from complex ERPs like Sage and NetSuite, which is very expensive, to the very simple, like Xero and there weren’t that many in the middle. I know that’s iplicit’s target market.  
“Sage Intacct wasn't as user-friendly from my point of view and it was a bit too expensive for us because we're quite a small business.” 

Anna had a list of features she was looking for. They included automatic import of bank feeds for reconciliation; being able to see invoices attached to line items; easy authorisation for purchase invoices; and the ability to see key information in a customisable dashboard.  

“iplicit offered simplicity with the right price tag,” she adds. 

‘We save over seven hours a week by using iplicit's automations and workflow authorisation tools’ 

Among the advantages of iplicit was its workflow authorisation feature. 

“With the old system, invoices used to be put in a file and given individually to people responsible for that department to sign them off,” says Anna. “Sometimes they were left on their desk and you had to chase them. 

“With iplicit, invoices are scanned, we’ve got visibility of them, and with iplicit’s traffic light system, we can see who needs nudging, and send them reminders. It’s all automated.” 

“iplicit has brought about enormous time savings, my colleagues used to work long hours before. That has been cut down quite significantly and they're able to finish their work at 5pm most days,” she says. 

The automated bank feeds have made a big difference. “I’d say it saves seven hours a week,” says Anna.