The Client
Royal Holloway, was founded over 170 years ago by two Victorian social pioneers who wanted to make a difference. Formed from two colleges, Bedford College, founded by Elizabeth Jesser Reid and Royal Holloway College, founded by Thomas and Jane Holloway. These colleges were among the first places in Britain where women could access higher education, so our rich history is deeply rooted in providing equity in opportunity, transforming lives through education and creating positive change.
Championing social change and inclusion has underpinned everything the University stands for and now Royal Holloway is one of the top 30 UK universities, according to The Times and Sunday Times Good University Guide 2024.
The requirement
Royal Holloway commissioned an Accounts Payable Review as a risk-free mechanism to recover unforeseen overpayments that may have escaped its robust systems and processes. Whilst it undertakes regular reviews and promotes good governance by conducting self-checks the University is aware overpayments can evade the most robust systems and some suppliers remain indifferent to returning monies.
The solution
Rockford Associates reviewed four and a half years of data, extracting AP transaction data directly from their Agresso systems data. The process was simple and straight forward as no scripting or software development was required. The data was uploaded to Rockford’s secure share file site, then processed via its bespoke data mining software “Pathfinder”.
Services were procured via Crown Commercial Services (CCS) procurement compliant Framework Agreement reference RM6226.
The results
In total 107,214 transactions were analysed, 99.978% of transactions by volume and 99.996% by value were correctly processed. Of the transactions reviewed 23 exceptions were identified.
In addition to the exceptions identified, Royal Holloway welcomed Rockford’s independent validation and positive reassurance that their internal controls and duplicate software processes were operating effectively and clearly within the parameters of a well-managed organisation.
