Nokia Finance department.

At one time all this information was laboriously produced on paper and collected by clerks who spent hours analyzing it. Apart from being an unbelievably boring job it was prone to inconsistency, inaccuracy and incompleteness and was usually too late for any necessary remedial action to be taken.

Things are different now. It is not that they are so much cleverer than our predecessors were; it's just that they have better tools. The obvious one is the computer. In most supermarkets the check-out process and the till are managed by bar codes on the goods which the customer wants to buy. These are passed before a bar code reader which registers the item and its price on the computerized till.

The customer gets the bill, grasps at the total and presents a debit or credit card. That is swiped through another reader and a credit card bill is produced which the customer checks and signs. No money has changed hands in terms of currency, no adding up has been done, every item charged for can be checked by the customer (who cannot add up anyway and merely puts in the trolley what is wanted and hopes for the best at the check-out).

That is a familiar practice to most people. But, of course, there is much more to it than that. The stock in the branch is replenished from the analyise of the items on the customer's bill - all the bar code sales are stored electrically. If customers use a loyalty card their personal shopping habits can be analyzed and mail shots can be personally directed.

As the company head office direct lines feed information on takings, which items have sold well and those which have not, what to send in the 39- ton transporter the following morning, abd how well or badly each branch is doing in terms of sales.

By comparing the income from each branch against the costs of running the branch and a proportion of the overheads (central administration, distribution, marketing and advertising, head office salaries and directors fringe benefits) the finance staff can present an immediate report the following morning on how any one branch or any one product is succeeding and also how all the branches and products are collectively moving towards their targets.

The point here is that Nokia are able to take action as soon as they are aware that it had all gone wrong and they know at once what to do.

In every Nokia branch the financial information is provided on daily basis What happens between opening hours one day is recorded, analyzed may be acted on by 0900 the next. It's usually earlier than that really, but head office staff gets in later. Management accounting it about everything that contributes to performance and controls everything that can be controlled.