Moree Plains Shire Council has used MAGIQ Performance to deliver its Operational Plan, achieving a significant improvement in the overall visibility of its organisational performance.
Moree Plains is located on the New South Wales and Queensland border in the heart of NSW’s Northern Wheatbelt. Recognised nationally as the Artesian Spa Capital of Australia, 300,000 people visit the baths annually to experience the therapeutic benefits of the waters at the newly developed Moree Artesian Aquatic Centre.
MAGIQ Performance is a highly sophisticated and powerful suite of Strategic Financial Management software including Budgeting, Reporting, Financial and Strategic Planning applications.
Moree Plains Shire has traditionally used the MAGIQ Performance product to meet its Budgeting and Financial Reporting requirements. Council has chosen to expand its use of the software, implementing the MAGIQ Strategic Planning application to achieve Council’s goal of more efficiently managing the delivery of its Operational Plan.
Prior to implementing MAGIQ Strategic Planning, Council had relied on a manual, highly administrative process to gather the data required to meet the State Government’s statutory reporting requirements.
According to Libby Carter, Moree Plains Shire Council’s Integrated Planning and Reporting Manager this process was not only incredibly time-consuming, but also led to significant issues with data consistency and accuracy.
“The data was being gathered, however there was very little consistency around the quality and degree of supporting commentary. This made it very difficult for senior management and our councillors to understand and interpret the information – essentially we were applying the resources to meet the reporting requirement and not really using the data to any business advantage,” said Libby.
“The process of gathering the data from each manager was much easier and far more consistent using MAGIQ. And that meant we could spend much more time on the higher value tasks of analysing the data and producing meaningful reports; providing an accurate and easy to interpret picture of our performance as an organisation.”
Libby recently reported to Council on the 2016/17 Operational Plan; the first report to be delivered using MAGIQ Strategic Planning, which according to Libby was extremely well received.
“One of our Councillors said that in more than 20 years at Council it was the most comprehensive report he had ever received about how we were tracking against our Operational Plan, which was fantastic feedback,” said Libby.
With the State Government’s “Fit for the Future” reform process driving a need to deliver improved business efficiency, Council had recognised a much greater level of transparency was required to efficiently manage allocation of funding across its more than 400 operational Activities.
Council’s Budgetary Control Accountant, Bianca Senior commented, “MAGIQ Performance allows us to easily track and compare the status of an Activity against budgeted expenditure. For example an Activity may be 90% complete, yet we can see that only 50% of the budget allocation has been used. Having access to this data means we can much more efficiently allocate funding, and that means we are delivering better outcomes for our community.”
Moree Plains Shire has achieved significant timesavings and improved data transparency using the MAGIQ Strategic Planning application. In the future, Council will continue to expand its use of the software to take full advantage of the product’s rich and flexible strategic planning capabilities.
*Copy supplied by MAGIQ Software
