Experts agree that perfect pregnancy nutrition is best achieved when the mother consumes whole foods containing nutrients such as calcium and folic acid from fruits and vegetables. It is not that easy for expectant mothers to get enough folic acid or calcium from whole food sources every day, so a health food vitamin or calcium supplement may be needed. When choosing the proper supplement it is important to understand the difference between natural health food vitamins for pregnancy nutrition and isolated multi-vitamins.When searching for the best pregnancy nutrition, be aware that it is better to consume vitamins, minerals and other nutrients that are attached to whole foods, not isolated. Whole food nutrients are much easier for the body to absorb, whereas isolated vitamins and minerals are often flushed out before the body can break them down to use for fuel. There are some excellent all natural, low carb, high fiber foods that provide perfect pregnancy nutrition, but you will need to search the Internet. Many of the best concentrated formulas are not sold in typical grocery stores or even health food stores.First, it is important to know some of the most valuable elements of perfect pregnancy nutrition.Here are the essential minerals that a pregnant woman needs on a daily basis:* calcium* protein* phosphorus* potassium* folic acid (folate) Folic acid is the synthetic form of folate that is found in supplements* Vitamins A, D, C, E and the entire B complex.It is a nutrition fact that calcium is an important mineral for everyone, especially children, adolescents, nursing mothers and expectant mothers who need perfect pregnancy nutrition. It is not easy for all pregnant mothers to consume enough calcium every day without a health food vitamin or calcium supplement of some kind. It is especially challenging to get enough calcium from whole foods, like fruits and vegetables.Some of the more familiar sources of calcium in whole foods are:* Broccoli* Yogurt* Cheese* Milk* BeansDandelion is a natural source of calcium from whole food and alfalfa has a high level of calcium with natural enzymes and chlorophyll, but these are a little harder to include in a daily diet for proper pregnancy nutrition. However, you can find a concentrated whole food calcium supplement that includes dandelion and alfalfa along with other whole food calcium sources.If you are inclined to take a calcium supplement, not only is it important for proper pregnancy nutrition that the calcium originates from whole food sources, it is equally important that Vitamin D2 is present. Vitamin D2 is crucial to aid the body in absorbing calcium. Vitamin D2 is a necessary component to work with the calcium for improved bone strength and density. In one particular natural whole food calcium supplement, 3 types of calcium are included with different absorption characteristics, and Vitamin D2 is present to enhance the absorption of calcium.Folate, also called Folic Acid and Vitamin B9 is another essential nutrient for perfect pregnancy nutrition. Folic acid is a B vitamin that helps the body create healthy new cells. That is why folate is very important for pregnancy nutrition as hopeful mothers create new life. Moms who include sufficient folic acid in their diets are taking positive steps toward preventing birth defects, especially of the baby’s brain or spine.Everyone has heard the stories about pregnant women who can’t control their mood swings. Plenty of medical research points to a deficiency of folic acid for fostering depression and other psychiatric disorders. In the book, “Food, Your Miracle Medicine” (Copyright 1993), Jean Carper states, “That folic acid can act as an antidepressant is no secret among scientists”. The book goes on to point out McGill University’s Dr. Young found, “accumulating evidence that folic acid deficiency can contribute to depressed mood”, and that eliminating the deficiency often cures the depression.For proper pregnancy nutrition, a woman needs about 800 mcg of folic acid daily. Nursing mothers can back that down to about 500 mcg. This level may not be easy for some to reach, as it requires up to six servings of foods such as spinach, beans or asparagus, every day. If a pregnant woman is not getting enough folate from whole foods, then a natural health food vitamin should be investigated.Foods with folic acid in them include:* Leafy, green vegetables* Fruits* Beans* Peas* NutsSome enriched breads, cereals and other grain products also contain folic acid. Again, it is important to be sure that the folate is attached to a natural whole food complex of B vitamins. You can find very effective whole foods, health drink concentrates and other pregnancy nutrition on the Internet that you will not find in retail stores. Just be sure to search for a natural health food vitamin for pregnancy nutrition. When you search, you will find folic acid along with other essential vitamins and minerals for perfect pregnancy nutrition.
Best in Class Finance Functions For Police Forces
Background
Police funding has risen by £4.8 billion and 77 per cent (39 per cent in real terms) since 1997. However the days where forces have enjoyed such levels of funding are over.
Chief Constables and senior management recognize that the annual cycle of looking for efficiencies year-on-year is not sustainable, and will not address the cash shortfall in years to come.
Facing slower funding growth and real cash deficits in their budgets, the Police Service must adopt innovative strategies which generate the productivity and efficiency gains needed to deliver high quality policing to the public.
The step-change in performance required to meet this challenge will only be achieved if the police service fully embraces effective resource management and makes efficient and productive use of its technology, partnerships and people.
The finance function has an essential role to play in addressing these challenges and supporting Forces’ objectives economically and efficiently.
Challenge
Police Forces tend to nurture a divisional and departmental culture rather than a corporate one, with individual procurement activities that do not exploit economies of scale. This is in part the result of over a decade of devolving functions from the center to the.divisions.
In order to reduce costs, improve efficiency and mitigate against the threat of “top down” mandatory, centrally-driven initiatives, Police Forces need to set up a corporate back office and induce behavioral change. This change must involve compliance with a corporate culture rather than a series of silos running through the organization.
Developing a Best in Class Finance Function
Traditionally finance functions within Police Forces have focused on transactional processing with only limited support for management information and business decision support. With a renewed focus on efficiencies, there is now a pressing need for finance departments to transform in order to add greater value to the force but with minimal costs.
1) Aligning to Force Strategy
As Police Forces need finance to function, it is imperative that finance and operations are closely aligned. This collaboration can be very powerful and help deliver significant improvements to a Force, but in order to achieve this model, there are many barriers to overcome. Finance Directors must look at whether their Force is ready for this collaboration, but more importantly, they must consider whether the Force itself can survive without it.
Finance requires a clear vision that centers around its role as a balanced business partner. However to achieve this vision a huge effort is required from the bottom up to understand the significant complexity in underlying systems and processes and to devise a way forward that can work for that particular organization.
The success of any change management program is dependent on its execution. Change is difficult and costly to execute correctly, and often, Police Forces lack the relevant experience to achieve such change. Although finance directors are required to hold appropriate professional qualifications (as opposed to being former police officers as was the case a few years ago) many have progressed within the Public Sector with limited opportunities for learning from and interaction with best in class methodologies. In addition cultural issues around self-preservation can present barriers to change.
Whilst it is relatively easy to get the message of finance transformation across, securing commitment to embark on bold change can be tough. Business cases often lack the quality required to drive through change and even where they are of exceptional quality senior police officers often lack the commercial awareness to trust them.
2) Supporting Force Decisions
Many Finance Directors are keen to develop their finance functions. The challenge they face is convincing the rest of the Force that the finance function can add value – by devoting more time and effort to financial analysis and providing senior management with the tools to understand the financial implications of major strategic decisions.
Maintaining Financial Controls and Managing Risk
Sarbanes Oxley, International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), Basel II and Individual Capital Assessments (ICA) have all put financial controls and reporting under the spotlight in the private sector. This in turn is increasing the spotlight on financial controls in the public sector.
A ‘Best in Class’ Police Force finance function will not just have the minimum controls to meet the regulatory requirements but will evaluate how the legislation and regulations that the finance function are required to comply with, can be leveraged to provide value to the organization. Providing strategic information that will enable the force to meet its objectives is a key task for a leading finance function.
3) Value to the Force
The drive for development over the last decade or so, has moved decision making to the Divisions and has led to an increase in costs in the finance function. Through utilizing a number of initiatives in a program of transformation, a Force can leverage up to 40% of savings on the cost of finance together with improving the responsiveness of finance teams and the quality of financial information. These initiatives include:
Centralization
By centralizing the finance function, a Police Force can create centers of excellence where industry best practice can be developed and shared. This will not only re-empower the department, creating greater independence and objectivity in assessing projects and performance, but also lead to more consistent management information and a higher degree of control. A Police Force can also develop a business partner group to act as strategic liaisons to departments and divisions. The business partners would, for example, advise on how the departmental and divisional commanders can meet the budget in future months instead of merely advising that the budget has been missed for the previous month.
With the mundane number crunching being performed in a shared service center, finance professionals will find they now have time to act as business partners to divisions and departments and focus on the strategic issues.
The cultural impact on the departments and divisional commanders should not be underestimated. Commanders will be concerned that:
o Their budgets will be centralized
o Workloads would increase
o There will be limited access to finance individuals
o There will not be on site support
However, if the centralized shared service center is designed appropriately none of the above should apply. In fact from centralization under a best practice model, leaders should accrue the following benefits:
o Strategic advice provided by business partners
o Increased flexibility
o Improved management information
o Faster transactions
o Reduced number of unresolved queries
o Greater clarity on service and cost of provision
o Forum for finance to be strategically aligned to the needs of the Force
A Force that moves from a de-centralized to a centralized system should try and ensure that the finance function does not lose touch with the Chief Constable and Divisional Commanders. Forces need to have a robust business case for finance transformation combined with a governance structure that spans operational, tactical and strategic requirements. There is a risk that potential benefits of implementing such a change may not be realized if the program is not carefully managed. Investment is needed to create a successful centralized finance function. Typically the future potential benefits of greater visibility and control, consistent processes, standardized management information, economies of scale, long-term cost savings and an empowered group of proud finance professionals, should outweigh those initial costs.
To reduce the commercial, operational and capability risks, the finance functions can be completely outsourced or partially outsourced to third parties. This will provide guaranteed cost benefits and may provide the opportunity to leverage relationships with vendors that provide best practice processes.
Process Efficiencies
Typically for Police Forces the focus on development has developed a silo based culture with disparate processes. As a result significant opportunities exist for standardization and simplification of processes which provide scalability, reduce manual effort and deliver business benefit. From simply rationalizing processes, a force can typically accrue a 40% reduction in the number of processes. An example of this is the use of electronic bank statements instead of using the manual bank statement for bank reconciliation and accounts receivable processes. This would save considerable effort that is involved in analyzing the data, moving the data onto different spreadsheet and inputting the data into the financial systems.
Organizations that possess a silo operating model tend to have significant inefficiencies and duplication in their processes, for example in HR and Payroll. This is largely due to the teams involved meeting their own goals but not aligning to the corporate objectives of an organization. Police Forces have a number of independent teams that are reliant on one another for data with finance in departments, divisions and headquarters sending and receiving information from each other as well as from the rest of the Force. The silo model leads to ineffective data being received by the teams that then have to carry out additional work to obtain the information required.
Whilst the argument for development has been well made in the context of moving decision making closer to operational service delivery, the added cost in terms of resources, duplication and misaligned processes has rarely featured in the debate. In the current financial climate these costs need to be recognized.
Culture
Within transactional processes, a leading finance function will set up targets for staff members on a daily basis. This target setting is an element of the metric based culture that leading finance functions develop. If the appropriate metrics of productivity and quality are applied and when these targets are challenging but not impossible, this is proven to result in improvements to productivity and quality.
A ‘Best in Class’ finance function in Police Forces will have a service focused culture, with the primary objectives of providing a high level of satisfaction for its customers (departments, divisions, employees & suppliers). A ‘Best in Class’ finance function will measure customer satisfaction on a timely basis through a metric based approach. This will be combined with a team wide focus on process improvement, with process owners, that will not necessarily be the team leads, owning force-wide improvement to each of the finance processes.
Organizational Improvements
Organizational structures within Police Forces are typically made up of supervisors leading teams of one to four team members. Through centralizing and consolidating the finance function, an opportunity exists to increase the span of control to best practice levels of 6 to 8 team members to one team lead / supervisor. By adjusting the organizational structure and increasing the span of control, Police Forces can accrue significant cashable benefit from a reduction in the number of team leads and team leads can accrue better management experience from managing larger teams.
Technology Enabled Improvements
There are a significant number of technology improvements that a Police Force could implement to help develop a ‘Best in Class’ finance function.
These include:
A) Scanning and workflow
Through adopting a scanning and workflow solution to replace manual processes, improved visibility, transparency and efficiencies can be reaped.
B) Call logging, tracking and workflow tool
Police Forces generally have a number of individuals responding to internal and supplier queries. These queries are neither logged nor tracked. The consequence of this is dual:
o Queries consume considerable effort within a particular finance team. There is a high risk of duplicated effort from the lack of logging of queries. For example, a query could be responded to for 30 minutes by person A in the finance team. Due to this query not being logged, if the individual that raised the query called up again and spoke to a different person then just for one additional question, this could take up to 20 minutes to ensure that the background was appropriately explained.
o Queries can have numerous interfaces with the business. An unresolved query can be responded against by up to four separate teams with considerable delay in providing a clear answer for the supplier.
The implementation of a call logging, tracking and workflow tool to document, measure and close internal and supplier queries combined with the set up of a central queries team, would significantly reduce the effort involved in responding to queries within the finance departments and divisions, as well as within the actual divisions and departments, and procurement.
C) Database solution
Throughout finance departments there are a significant number of spreadsheets utilized prior to input into the financial system. There is a tendency to transfer information manually from one spreadsheet to another to meet the needs of different teams.
Replacing the spreadsheets with a database solution would rationalize the number of inputs and lead to effort savings for the front line Police Officers as well as Police Staff.
D) Customize reports
In obtaining management information from the financial systems, police staff run a series of reports, import these into excel, use lookups to match the data and implement pivots to illustrate the data as required. There is significant manual effort that is involved in carrying out this work. Through customizing reports the outputs from the financial system can be set up to provide the data in the formats required through the click of a button. This would have the benefit of reduced effort and improved motivation for team members that previously carried out these mundane tasks.
In designing, procuring and implementing new technology enabling tools, a Police Force will face a number of challenges including investment approval; IT capacity; capability; and procurement.
These challenges can be mitigated through partnering with a third party service company with whom the investment can be shared, the skills can be provided and the procurement cycle can be minimized.
Conclusion
It is clear that cultural, process and technology change is required if police forces are to deliver both sustainable efficiencies and high quality services. In an environment where for the first time forces face real cash deficits and face having to reduce police officer and support staff numbers whilst maintaining current performance levels the current finance delivery models requires new thinking.
While there a number of barriers to be overcome in achieving a best in class finance function, it won’t be long before such a decision becomes mandatory. Those who are ahead of the curve will inevitably find themselves in a stronger position.
Choosing Sports Shoes
When it comes to sports, wearing protective and supportive clothing is essential, but of all your sports clothes, you must pay particular attention to your trainers. Without the correct footwear, you run the risk of causing untold problems for your body. Indeed, an ill-fitting pair of shoes can have devastating consequences for your feet, knees, hips, back, and neck. For this reason, it is important to invest money in a decent pair of trainers, designed by a reputable company who have the interests of the sportsperson at heart.When it comes to trainers, there is great variation in the quality of the shoe, and the degree to which they protect the runner. A brand such as Adidas is ideal. When Adidas first arrived in the sportswear market, they laid down the company’s constitution, which was to create Adidas trainers that would protect the feet from injury. Today, this brand competes in a global market, their survival rests upon the premise that their clothing and trainers are always of the utmost quality.If you are just embarking upon fitness regime then, more likely than not, you will not have a sufficient understanding of the qualities of a good trainer. Stick to a brand that you know, and which is trustworthy, such as Adidas trainers, and always follow the advice outlined below:
Always purchase trainers from a reputable shoe store. You can find such stores in the high street or on the Internet, either way, by shopping with a trusted store, you guarantee that any information you garner is accurate and in your best interests.
Establish the pressure points inherent in your walk. Do this by looking at the soles of your shoes, the place at which there is most wear is the area of your foot to which you apply most pressure. Buy trainers that support this area most. For example, if you find a lot of wear on the heel, you need to have a shoe that provides extra cushioning on the heel.
If you know that your feet have certain defining characteristics, a high arch for example, then contact your shoe store and ask which styles of trainer will protect your feet given their build. Of the Adidas trainers range, the Supernova Cushion 7 offers great support for people with a high arch.
Think about how vigorously you plan to exercise. The more exercise you do, the greater your need for a professionally designed trainer. If you plan to exercise a lot, you will need to spend a fair amount of money on your trainers to ensure they offer you the support you require.
The first few times you wear the shoes, you will probably find that they cause some pain, this is quite normal, and is simply because you are breaking them in. If the pain continues for a prolonged period, then you have probably purchased a style of trainers that does not support your foot.