Posted on 25th May 2012
Dumfries and Galloway Council Goes Live with Integra
Capita IB Solutions has announced that Dumfries and Galloway Council has successfully gone live with Integra Financials, as well as Job Costing and Time Recording modules. The project has been delivered on time and has included the first implementation of a Computer Based Training system to train 700+ users of the system.
Since 1997 and prior to selecting Integra, Dumfries and Galloway had been using Powersolve. This was used by all services across the Council and was the primary source of financial management information. There had been growing management concerns that the system could not meet many of the current and future challenges facing the authority and that the aging architecture could not enable necessary improvements to management information. Despite many on-going developments the Powersolve system was not considered to be efficient or user-friendly by the majority of users.
Lindsay Wilson, Business Performance and Development Manager at Dumfries and Galloway Council, said, “The increased profile towards the financial control within the council and the requirement for detailed financial information to support budget processes, highlighted the weaknesses with our previous system. It was recognised that replacing this with a more modern enterprise-wide software system would offer the potential for both real and indirect efficiency savings. We decided to look for a replacement system that would allow us to review and enhance existing business processes so that finance officers, for example, can devote precious time to more value-add activities.”
He continues, “We selected Capita IB Solutions because of the capabilities of the software and their experience of delivering this type of project. In addition, they demonstrated that they could provide the council with on-going training, which was deemed critical to the success of such a large implementation.”
Integra Open Financials is a financial and e-business software suite designed to suit organisations across all sectors. The modular design provides an unprecedented degree of scalability for today’s businesses. In delivering the most efficient and effective financial and procurement processes, Integra uses automated workflows to increase agility, control, and speed, reducing paper flow and data entry to an absolute minimum.
As part of the Integra suite, the Integra Integration Gateway provides Dumfries and Galloway Council with the capability to link seamlessly with the authority’s other core systems.
Capita IB Solutions supplied a professional and experienced project and support team, which ensured a successful implementation. “This support was a key influencer in our decision to select Capita IB Solutions,” said Lindsay, adding, “The current FMIS system has 741 users but is expected to increase to about 1,100. All of them needed to be trained on how to use the Integra software, so we needed a company that could deliver a complete solution with a very specific focus on training.”
For the project, Capita IB Solutions proposed a two-tier approach to the training. Training was delivered to the authority’s core project team in a mixture of formal “class-room” training and one-to-one “on the job” training. This gave the main users the ability to maintain a level of in-house expertise around their particular job function. There was also a programme of computer based training for the end-user community, tailored to meet the specific needs of the authority.
“The project teams from both the council and Capita IB Solutions worked really hard to get us live on schedule,” says Lindsay. He concludes, “The system is up and running and we are already seeing some key benefits, particularly around reliability, speed and accuracy. We were also impressed with the training service and this has given us a real opportunity to hit the ground running with Integra.”
For further information please contact Steven Budge, Marketing Manager at steven.budge@capita.co.uk
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