This theme will just not go away. One of those battling it out on the front line reports a pyric victory today by achieving a 7.5% positive “balance of payments” figure. He did not however succeed in avoiding a reduced SMP by gaining allowance for all the costs on CDS 7s in the system awaiting assessment.
In describing the conversation with his Account Manager he, fairly in my view, made the point that she was allowed no discretion and had no room to negotiate a reasonable settlement. Furthermore he made clear he would be back immediately in the new contract year for an increase to reflect his actual billing position. I guess many other firms will be in exactly the same position.
There can be little doubt that this exercise is designed to massage the figures for, presumably, DCA consumption at the end of this contract year. There seems little doubt too that this will be a false picture. Sadly somebody’s job is probably on the line for this bit of slight of hand.
Anyhow Account Managers might soon be about to become Relationship Managers (and what a good start to that development this is) in the meantime they are Auto Reconciliation Robots. In true LSC fashion this has a three letter acronym – ARR or, as I prefer “Autorecbot”. Any comments from disgruntled, anonymous Autorecbots will be treated in complete confidence.