Program Financial Management Software
Using program financial management software across multiple projects in a Local Authority
About Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council
“I can now easily and quickly provide accurate and up to date reports on cost, progress and resources across single projects or the whole division if necessary”
Tom O’Byrne
Project & Finance Co-ordinator Technical Services
Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council
Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council delivers many services in a thriving area of the Tees Valley in the North East of England that includes Billingham, Stockton, Thornaby, Ingleby Barwick, Yarm and surrounding areas.
The Council has organized its individual professional service functions into a single Technical Services Department. The department is structured under two board divisions, the Built and Natural Environment and the Consultancy Practice.
Alongside these service areas, a Programme & Development team manage the programme of work and its associated financial controls for budgets, income and expenditure.
The Built and Natural Environment division provides services covering traffic and road safety, the Local Transport Plan, urban design and environment policy, whilst the Consultancy Practice covers highways management, civil engineering, architectural services and building services.
The Challenge
The department now represents a sizeable business with a high turnover and over 500 projects which must be controlled each year.
Existing management processes relied upon spreadsheets and a variety of disconnected cumbersome tools and processes to provide this control, which were not as effective as was needed.
Tom O’Byrne, Project & Finance Co-ordinator for the Technical Services department, spent a major part of his working day managing a large spreadsheet which held management information on all of the department’s projects including project status, progress updates, key dates and milestones and project financial information.
The project financial information was collated by running extractions from the Council’s Agresso financial systems and lengthy manipulation in spreadsheets before merging with the main project spreadsheet.
Technical Services decided they needed a system that would simplify the process, save time and give them visibility over the many projects they were running. Their requirements included:
- Integration with financial management system for project cost reporting and tracking
- A system that was easy to understand and update by end users
- A central location for all project information
- Simple and effective reporting
Our Solution
After a thorough tender process, Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council’s Technical Services division chose to implement ProjectVision as it met all of their requirements and its integration points would save a significant amount of time for both Tom and the project teams.
Consultancy
Cora Systems worked closely with Tom and the users of the system to ensure ProjectVision would deliver the maximum benefit. A programme structure was set up matching their business and delivering their reporting requirements.
Interfaces
Cora Systems interfaced ProjectVision with the Council’s Agresso Financial Management System to display up-to-date project costs and time sheets entries. This removed the need for rekeying data and means that the users can continue using existing time sheet functionality. All the financial data is now easily available on a project basis and can be rolled up to team and department level to quickly see how much money has been spent or is planned to be spent.
Training
Cora Systems ran a training session for key users in Technical Services who in turn trained other users. This was a cost effective approach and also ensured that a team of expert users was created, ensuring the support for the product and user buy-in.
Effective reporting
ProjectVision reports were configured to meet the specific requirements of Technical Services. The powerful report generator was also implemented allowing Tom and his team to quickly and easily generate bespoke reports as and when required.
Benefits to the Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council
Following the introduction of ProjectVision to Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council’s Technical Services, Tom and his team are able to get a clear view of the progress and costs of all of their projects very simply and easily. Technical Services now knows what is happening, what stage it is at and how much it is costing.
Significant time savings and efficiency gains have been achieved through the financial interface removing the need for the project spreadsheets and freeing up Tom’s valuable time to concentrate on more strategic matters.
“Technical Services has benefited from using ProjectVision in terms of effective resource utilisation and financial control, allowing the provision of much more reliable work programs that our clients and partners can access”
Tom O’Byrne
Project & Finance Co-ordinator Technical Services
Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council
To download a PDF of this Case Study, Please Click Here - Stockton-on-Tees Technical Services Case Study
