Investment house invests in finance software

Standard Life Investments is updating its finance system as part of its plans to beef up its business intelligence.

As part of the £250,000 deal, Coda will provide Standard Life Investments with its Coda-Financials software. The new system will come on stream in the next month.

Niall Howard, Standard Life's finance director told silicon.com the company had previously been using a mixture of general ledger software and spreadsheets to manage financial data.

The new software will bring these elements together into a single "unified" ledger, he said.

Howard said: "With our ambitions to build business intelligence, we wanted to 'up-tool' and 'up-skill' our business to be fit for purpose."

silicon.com Financial Services

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Standard Life Investments is a principal subsidiary of Standard Life Group, which floated earlier this year in the largest UK IPO of 2006. Howard said that following the IPO, the funding for a new accounts system was secured in April.

He added: "We liked the functionality of the software and have developed a good strategic partnership with Coda."

The software provides a browser-based information service that can operate across several countries and currencies. The initial contract includes licences for 40 finance users.