Case Study: Rugby Borough Council achieves streamlined budget tracking and faster reporting with Ideagen's Covalent

Using Covalent to track budget over/underspend at cost centre level at Rugby Borough Council

Rugby Borough Council needed a more streamlined way to import, manage and link disconnected departmental income and expenditure data as part of a 2007 restructure and to address weaknesses highlighted in its Use of Resources assessment. The council had already chosen Covalent as its corporate performance management system and wanted a solution that would let it track actuals against budget and reforecast reliably at cost-centre level.

Using Covalent the council set up 194 cost-centre performance indicators, imports monthly net-expenditure from Agresso, applies “Goldilocks” gauges and automated red triggers that require corrective actions to be recorded. Integrated RAG and exception reports, mandatory coding and easy imports reduced reporting time dramatically (up to 20,000 cells in under 20 minutes) and made core financial spend visible within a week, increasing transparency, owner accountability and enabling earlier identification of variances such as departmental underspends.

Rugby Borough Council

Rugby Borough Council

Corporate Performance and Improvement Manager