Managing a financial solution
The Organisation
Penrith City Council was recently named NSW’s Public Sector Organisation of the year by CPA Australia. Penrith City is at the foot of the Blue Mountains, 55km from Sydney’s CBD, with a population of 178,000 with growth of 800 new homes each year. The Council has an annual budget of $150 million with around 1000 staff in 23 departments and its controlled entities. It manages a vast network of assets such as roads, parks and recreational facilities, libraries and day care centres. The Council also manages building and zoning approvals and development planning as well as many community programs.
“While our existing systems were excellent when managing a year as a single time period, moving to managing months and multiple years on top of all our other controls made the whole thing too complex,” he said. “We were facing exponential growth in the workload of maintaining, monitoring and trying to manage that information on our existing system.
Penrith City Council needed the ability to model the long term impact of growth on infrastructure taking into account revenue and asset lifecycle.
The Challenge
Penrith City Council needed greater detail and precision in budgeting and tracking expenditure, monitoring on-going projects and planning long-term outcomes for capital works and existing infrastructure. Mr Peter Browne, Senior Corporate Accountant, said that because the Council’s information requirements were so extensive – the asset management register, for example, contains 16,000 assets – their existing financial management system consumed too much staff time on managing budgets. The Council needed a better system for longer term planning.
“While our existing systems were excellent when managing a year as a single time period, moving to managing months and multiple years on top of all our other controls made the whole thing too complex,” he said. “We were facing exponential growth in the workload of maintaining, monitoring and trying to manage that information on our existing system.
Penrith City Council needed the ability to model the long term impact of growth on infrastructure taking into account revenue and asset lifecycle.
The Solution
Penrith City Council will implement Mondelio in April 2004. It will supplement the Council’s existing system which was updated three years ago to add the functionality of capturing more detail in budgeting and financial tracking. Mondelio represents the next step in the evolution of the Council’s systems. It will be used for budget monitoring throughout the organisation and particularly in the Finance Department to model long term scenarios.
The Business Benefits
Mondelio will dramatically improve Penrith City Council’s efficiency in financial management. Business cycles had already increased to monthly however the Council found this caused a significant increase in workload. The Council anticipates Mondelio will improve efficiency in this area. Overall and most importantly, the Mondelio solution will deliver effective control over long-term planning.
Contact
Learn why thousands of users rely on Mondelio to manage and optimise their business planning and reporting processes. Call us on 1300 851 260 or email us at info@mondelio.com
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