Civica Helps Councils Modernise Financial Systems and Prepare For Service Transformation With £545,000 Contract Wins
Strategic overhaul of financial systems set to improve councils’ financial control and planning; will lay foundations for wider local service transformation programmes
Civica has won contracts with City of York Council, Chorley Borough Council and Wychavon District Council worth a total of £545,000, through its Financial Systems division.
Through the three programmes Civica's Financials division will help the councils to build effective foundations for:
- centralising financial systems with increasing use of automated administrative processes
- integrating separate departmental transactional systems into finance departments' central financial management needs
- uniting front and back office operations as part of service transformations
- delivering deeper system-based savings as required by the Treasury's latest Spending Review
- building flexible payment systems into local services, supporting citizen-centric service innovations
City of York Council is to implement Civica's Authority Financials software platform for improved income management and flexible financial reporting. The strategic programme will begin with implementation of general ledger and debtor software in the first quarter of 2009. The council will then be able to successively bring different departments into automated financial processes, share transactional data more widely, phase in automatic invoicing for services and adopt wider e-procurement systems.
To help the council drive through strategic process changes that will affect business processes across the council, Civica's Enterprise Service Transformation team is delivering a change management consultancy programme in parallel with the financial system re-engineering. City of York Council selected Authority Financials because it is well suited for local government processes, particularly its system referenceability and data migration functionality, which help reduce the council's overall risk when migrating to the new platform.
Chorley Borough Council in Lancashire has implemented Authority Financials, building on its financial management modernisation programme which will ensure that all online, call centre and automated payments comply with the credit card industry’s Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) – the benchmark for secure credit transactions. Begun in spring this year, the implementation is scheduled for autumn completion. The council has previously implemented Civica Financials software including general ledger, debtors, procurement and invoice scanning. In future programme phases Civica will deliver bank reconciliation software, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) integration and browser-based receipting, helping to automate financial reporting and bank reconciliations.
Wychavon District Council in Worcestershire is upgrading its existing Authority Financials software as part of a drive for further operational efficiencies across core services including Revenues & Benefits, Environmental Health and Client Services. Wychavon's Financial Services Department plans to streamline different departments' administrative processes using the greater flexibility provided by the upgraded Civica Financials platform. Implementation is scheduled for completion by April 2009.
David Roots, managing director for local government at Civica said: "Civica's Financials division is helping authorities re-engineer processes for more accurate income management and wider operational efficiencies. Our software functionality also provides the foundation for integrating front line service capabilities and back office transactions in the future, helping councils to transform their service platforms."