City Of Port Phillip Banishes Run-time Blues
The Age
Tuesday April 21, 1998
THE BEST software in the world isn't much good to a company unless it is up and running with the least possible inconvenience to the organisation. Downtime costs money and causes confusion, alarm and despondency among IT managers.
Hitting both price and time frame right on the nose were the main criteria laid down by the City of Port Phillip when it decided to modernise and expand its financial system. The contract went to Computron, an international software company that markets financial and workflow applications as well as works-maintenance management solutions.
Ram Chandramouli, project manager of systems implementation for the council, said council had selected Computron because it wanted the company that sold the software to implement it. "We wanted fixed-time implementation and fixed cost," he said.
"They prime-contracted the whole process. They supplied the hardware and the software and the interface. We wanted somebody who could do it in our time-frame and at a fixed cost. We didn't care how many hours they spent on it, or how many extra hands they had to bring in. We needed to know at the outset what the final total cost would be and we wanted the work completed on the day we specified.
"That was the guarantee they were able to give and it was for us a most attractive part of their proposal," Chandramouli said. Computron met their target. All of Port Phillip's financials now run on Computron software.
Computron financial systems compete with SAP, Oracle and Peoplesoft in most sectors of industry but has done well with organisations such as municipal councils.
In Victoria, as well as the City of Port Phillip, their clients include Brimbank City Council and Glen Eira Council, as well as utilities such as Wimmera Mallee Water.
Brimbank, formed by the merger of Sunshine and Keilor in the west of Melbourne, had to share information across 123-square kilometres. It had to meet the State Government's criteria on financial accountability and be more commercially focused.
Brimbank's other problem was that it has the second-highest unemployment figures in Victoria, a sad fact that impacts upon the council's ability to draw support from its constituents. It had to improve efficiency within a limited revenue stream.
Brimbank's old system did not allow council managers to track financial performance on a monthly basis. "It was a diabolical situation," said Allan Holmes, director of the council's corporate services. Like the City of Port Phillip, Brimbank went looking for a solution that could be implemented on a fixed-rate and that would give the efficiencies and economies required.
Councils were big business, handling huge amounts of other people's money. "$80 million in our case," he said. "In the old days, they didn't see themselves as acountable. Now they are. The old system could not give us the information. We had to be efficient and effective.
"The system we have put in is cost-effective and it is giving our organisation the kind of information it needs. We're doing audits on time and we are interfacing confidently with the proprietary systems we use for rating and other specialist functions. We have made a significant leap in technology.
"We still have a long way to go, but we are already seeing tangible benefits and we believe we are on the right track for the future."
Making major decisions on new IT systems isn't easy for anyone and for councils, which use public money, the process demands care and foresight. In common with all Victorian municipal councils, Port Phillip had gone through considerable restructuring. It had come into being in 1995 as a result of the Kennett Government's decision to slash the number of councils in the state.
Port Phillip was the result of a merger of Port Melbourne, South Melbourne, St Kilda and part of Prahran. The old councils had been in operation for more than 100 years. The new council was a new entity covering a vastly greater area and population than any of its individual parts.
The Government reforms demanded that councils should be more accountable and competitive. The internal departments had to compete for work on a tender basis, for example.
So Port Phillip needed to decentralise its costs and give its service managers a better view of corporate information.
Anna Muszak, manager of the council's information management department, had a financial system that did not meet the needs of 1997, let alone the coming century.
"We found ourselves operating in a fast-changing environment as a result of the reform process," she said.
"As part of the restructure process, we developed separate companies based on internally awarded contracts for which we needed security and flexible financial reporting. The old system did not provide any of these features."
They went out to tender, seeking installation of an integrated Financial Management System and a workflow application. These now form the backbone of the council's operation.
The core financial system includes several modules - general ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, fixed assets and purchasing - all needed for a more efficient management system.
"Prior to implementation of our new system, all monthly financial and management reports were downloaded from the legacy system into an Excel file," Muszak said.
"We were constrained by the fact that we were unable to make any changes to the data files in the legacy system once they were in Excel."
This was because Excel used extensive macros and other features to produce month-end reports.
"It used to take us at least five working days, with a group of five staff each month," Chandramouli said.
"After the implementation, we set up all our monthly reports on the system using Power Report Writer in the Computron system, and we are now able to produce all our reports immediately after we complete the month-end journals. What used to take us five days is now done in an hour," he said. "This gives us more time to check the information."
Muszak said she and her people were impressed with the system's flexibility, especially its ability to handle organisational change and growth.
"We have already realised many benefits from the new software - better security of data and better access. And because it provides a graphical-user interface, it is much easier to use," she said.
"The software has great forecasting tools, which provide us with better manipulation and forecasting of information. It gives us a better understanding of where our business is heading."
All of the council's departments were now using the Computron financials, Chandramouli said.
"We have other things which are running in the network. We do not go out to the Internet or an intranet, but people are able to dial in from outside. We have child-care centres and others who are able to dial into Computron.
"We are looking at the possibility of implementing some kind of intranet within the organisation," Chandramouli said. "But we do not use any browser-based applications at the moment."
The system runs on Unix platform on an HP9000. They use version 3.1 on an Oracle database with an AUI presentation layer. They have more than 150 users with authorisation to get into the system and a peak load of about 90 people.
"We have used the system for our budgets this year," he said. "Previously each department did its budget on a spreadsheet and other pieces of paper, but using the security of Computron this year we allowed them to key into the system. They can review those inputs and finalise their budgets and then the keying of the budget and the consolidation happens in a matter of seconds.
"They can key into the system - they don't need to use Excel or anything - but we have allowed them through the Computron security system to key only into next year's budget.
"With the security in place, we can allow them to do that but not touch any of the actuals. Then they can do reports and compare how their estimates for next year compare with actuals this year, and so on," he said.
"So they can do all the trends on their own screens without any of the accountant people having to help them. It sits on the server but through the client they are able to log into the system and their own budget, but not anything else."
The security system was set up by Port Phillip's own people, using the features of the Computron applications, Chandramouli said.
"We have learned quite a bit on security measures. We used to have a system that had no controls at all and now we know exactly who is active in what and what information is being logged in and what data entry is being done. We have a full history."
* "The system we have put in is cost-effective and it is giving our organisation the kind of information it needs. We're doing audits on time and we are interfacing confidently with the proprietary systems we use for rating and other specialist functions. We have made a significant leap in technology."
-- Allan Holmes, director of corporate services, Brimbank City Council.
* "We found ourselves operating in a fast-changing environment. As part of the restructure process we developed separate companies based on internally awarded contracts for which we needed security and flexible financial reporting. The old system did not provide any of these features."
-- Anna Muszak, manager of Port Phillip's information management department.
© 1998 The Age