Curriculum Vitea

Stephen W Allen

Born 1951. Educated University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Polytechnic of the South Bank.

Career

MAFF (Administration and Audit)
Home Office (Audit)
HMSO - now privatised as The Stationery Office (Audit and Systems/Business Development)
ACBA (UK) LTD audit, consultancy and MS Excel systems development.

In 1995, I took 'early retirement' from HMSO and spent 3 years as an HGV 1 driver. This led directly to the development of the ACBA Traffic Diary and, subsequently, its sister program the ACBA Accounting Daybook in Excel. These 2 packages were built to customer specifications and were successful in their own right. In fact the ACBA Accounting Daybook continues as the accounting/financial control package employed by ACBA (UK) LTD.

However, although Excel is hugely flexible and can cope with this kind of package development, the new generation of databases were probably more suited to systems where control of user input and protection of data integrity is of paramount importance. The company redirected its focus on the development of products for use in audit and analytical business enterprises.

The first ACBA audit package (Random Sampling) was developed to meet a gap in the market. Whereas it was easy to take random samples of transaction lists held in electronic form, there was nothing that aided the random selection of samples from lists held on paper. The conventional practice of selecting every n^th transaction on every n^th page does not meet the requirements of a truly random sample and can be too easily manipulated by the person undertaking the selection. ACBA Random Sampling both records details of the basic sources of your transaction data and creates an entirely random selection - reporting the items selected and their position in the transaction data source. It is protected from any allegation of bias.

The subsequent development of ACBA Electronic Working Papers (ACBA-EWP) was expected initially to be the primary preserve of small to medium audit functions as a work recording and reporting tool. However, the emphasis on indexing, generating effective control over templates and creating linkages between large numbers of worksheets in an Excel workbook has lead, potentially, to a completely revised approach to the control and design of spreadsheet systems.

The analysis of data and data modelling represent the core functionality of spreadsheets. Mostly Excel provides excellent tools for working with such data, but it is not so good a recording a clear pathway of either the method of development of a model or the range and logic of analyses undertaken on a particular set of data. ACBA Tool's primary function is to automatically generate audit trails for model development or data analysis within Excel. The package additionally contains an excellent range of worksheet functions for extracting numbers from and comparing numbers within text strings. ACBA Tools has been shown to be particularly effective for the identification of rogue transactions across systems interfaces.

While computer and communications engineering continues to develop at an extraordinary pace, many enterprises in Great Britain (particularly local authorities) continue to employ software packages based (in computing terms) on old technology. These packages are often relatively cheap but retain powerful user interfaces. Their drawback is often gaining access to the behind the scenes database in a form that allows the user to extract useful information. Over recent years the company has directed much effort to the import of data from various sources (PDF files, word processing documents, raw systems output, report writer output, large text files and HTML files) and its conversion into analysable form within Excel. In line with its developmental ethos ACBA (UK) LTD provides a number of tools have been created to help these conversion processes.

CV in detail

Dillon’s Bookshop 1973 – 1974 Department Manager; Purchase of stock and counter sales.
: MAFF 1974 – 1983 Executive Officer/HEO; Administrative and policy development responsibilities
: MAFF 1983 – 1986 Internal Auditor; Audit reviews; MAFF emergency food stores.; Control and efficacy of livestock subsidies.; Role of the Meat & Livestock Commission.
: Home Office 1986 – 1988 Senior Internal Auditor; Audit reviews; Planning and control in the Prison Service Industries and Farms Division.
Statistical review of Prison Education: HMSO 1988 – 1994 Senior Internal Auditor; Audit reviews:; HMSO Corporate Governance.; HMSO Corporate Marketing.; Commercial viability and control of HMSO paper stock holdings.; Sales function in the Publishing division.; Sales function in the Office Supplies division.; Production planning and control at the HMSO presses.; Operation of competitive tendering rules.; Operation and efficacy of travel and subsistence rules.; Audit risk analysis.
: HMSO 1994 – 1996 Paper Stock Manager; Purchase of HMSO owned printing paper (Ł5 million pa).; Stock control and promotion of effective usage in HMSO; Development & implementation of new computerised stock control system (Paradox).; Development and implementation of paper usage estimating system (Excel)