Your data IS your business. You need to own and control it and it must be secure. Here's why we think TIPS achieves these aims:

• You hold the data locally and it can be secured by you - you do not need to worry about off-site security, backup procedures that you do not control, or a major hack of systems you cannot control.
• Your data is accessible to any IT consultant or other program that you might need in the future. We don't own or control it - it is yours to use however you like.
• Your clients can be assured that their personal data is held by you alongside any paper files and not on some server in the "cloud".
• You can easily satisfy FCA and Data Protection rules.

Because the data is held locally on a universal database server, TIPS offers a rich and responsive interface for ease of use.

Some back office systems state that you own your data and that you can download that data. Unless the software provider can give you a copy of the DATABASE (from which you would find it difficult to extract meaningfull output), what you get are "flat files" such as Excel or CSV files. You have lost any detail on relationships between the data elements.