South Staffordshire Council has signed a contract with COA (CedarOpenAccounts) to provide new financial management software that will will improve processes and budget consolidation, modernise its financial processes and improve back office efficiencies in conjunction with Gershon Agenda requirements.
The Council decided to replace its legacy system with an advanced financial system from COA that would help it deliver more efficiency savings. The Council will also be implementing COA's Collaborative Planning and financial reporting solutions to enable its finance team to more efficiently collate, manage and report budgetary information from the numerous Council departments. The Council will be able to incorporate non-financial information in its reporting for Performance Indicators.
The Council will also be piloting the COA eprocurement solution with a select number of departments later in the year, prior to roll-out of an eprocurement system across the entire Council.
Phil Cooper, director of finance at Staffordshire Council said: "With the COA solution we will be able to harness new technologies and deliver the savings required by the Gershon Agenda. We're particularly impressed with COA's Collaborative Planning solution, based on Oracle technology, and the company's proven track record and strengths both in the local government and private sectors."
"The reporting capabilities integrated in the financial management system will greatly improve our reporting processes to senior managers, usually a complex and time consuming task. The self-service finance forms will improve invoicing and dramatically reduce paperwork. The new COA solution will cut down on bureaucracy and automate administrative tasks, allowing the finance team to make better use if its resources."
Go-live of the financial management system will take place in July 2007 and the second phase of Collaborative Planning is planned for September 2007.
