Integra helps Medway Council enhance its financial performance through digital transformation
Secure, scalable fully hosted cloud solution
Automation of key processes
Advanced analytics and reporting
The Customer
Medway Council provides essential local government services for ¼ million people in Kent. It looks after the education, environment, social care, housing, planning and business needs of the populations of Strood, Rochester, Chatham, Gillingham, Rainham as well as the more rural areas including the Hoo Peninsular. The requirement to cut costs whilst delivering a high quality service for its citizens has led the Council to look to embrace digital technologies to help it achieve its goals.
The Challenge
Medway Council has been using Integra since 1998. The service was managed in house and serviced by Medway IT specialists, supported by the IBSS team. Over the years, a range of new modules were added to keep pace with Council requirements, although a number of activities remained paper based requiring considerable levels of time and resource. But following a major financial review of departmental activities, the Council decided that it wanted to rationalise its IT landscape and look for more efficient, digital ways of working.
Facing extremely tight installation times, the new solution needed to be installed and tested by March 2016 prior to the busy key accounting period starting in April. Any delay would postpone the implementation until August and put the already stretched accounts management team under increased stress.
The Solution
A decision was taken to upgrade to the new, web based version of Integra and to opt for a cloud based solution. Taking advantage of the fully hosted approach not only provided the Council with a scalable and cost effective solution but also gave the IT team additional peace of mind and the scope to focus on core activities. In addition, the upgraded solution enabled the Council to purchase new modules such as Fixed Asset Management as well as Business Analytics and Reports so it could gain increased insight into all its financial data, thereby empowering its staff to take the actions needed to deliver an enhanced and financially sustainable service.
The IBSS and Medway Council teams worked hand in hand to implement and test this major new system installation. Work started in January 2016 and all key solution aspects were tested and signed off prior to ‘go live’ at the end of March. This success was due to the commitment and enthusiasm of the Medway Council staff as well as the highly experienced and committed IBSS team.
The Integra solution will empower Medway Council to carry out an increasing amount of its financial forecasting and management online, saving time and effort whilst reducing its previous dependency on spread sheets. Enhanced reports will deliver major benefits for the budget setting and management processes as all financial data will be analysed and evaluated instantly. This will ensure accurate and timely information is available whenever it is needed and will empower the Council to more effectively manage and reduce budgets as its finance team can look at ‘actual’ figures to make informed decisions on budget requirements.