One of Australia’s most progressive councils, Penrith City Council, is implementing a revolutionary corporate modelling solution to deliver effective control over long term planning. Named New South Wales Public Sector Organisation for 2003 by CPA Australia, Penrith City Council is one of the largest Local Governments in New South Wales.
Mondelio is an Australian innovation which is used to develop and manage budgets, run feasibility studies and provide detailed reporting and accurate forecasting in a single, integrated solution. Mondelio supersedes spreadsheets and OLAP (On-line Analytical Processing) tools. Its power lies in its automation and ability to use historical data to manage both the past and the future in one software solution.
The organisation
Penrith City Council is located at the foot of the Blue Mountains, 55 kilometres from Sydney’s CBD. It has a population of 178,000, with an annual growth of 800 new homes. Council has an annual budget of $150 million with 1,000 staff in 23 departments and its controlled entities. It manages a vast network of assets such as roads, parks, recreational facilities, libraries and day care centres. Council also manages building and zoning approvals as well as many community programs.
The challenge
Penrith City Council is constantly managing growth. This includes an increasing number of facilities and services for its expanding population. It required greater detail and precision in budgeting and tracking expenditure. Council also needed to monitor ongoing projects more closely and plan long term outcomes more precisely for capital works and existing infrastructure.
Senior Corporate Accountant, Peter Browne, said that because Council’s information requirements were so extensive – the asset management register, for example, contains 16,000 assets – the existing financial management system consumed too much staff time on managing budgets. Council needed a better system for longer term planning.
“While our existing systems were excellent when managing a year as a single time period, moving to managing months and multiple years on top of all our other controls made the whole thing too complex,” Peter Browne said. “When you keep adding complexity to your system, it’s like adding an extra dimension. We were facing exponential growth in the workload of maintaining, monitoring and trying to manage that information on our existing system.”
The solution
Mondelio will supplement Penrith’s existing system, updated three years ago, to capture more detail in budgeting and financial tracking. Mondelio represents the next step in the evolution of Penrith’s systems. It will be used for budget monitoring throughout the organisation and particularly in the Finance Department to model long term scenarios.
Business benefits
Mondelio will give Penrith City Council the ability to model the long term impact of growth on infrastructure taking into account revenue and asset lifecycle. Penrith will gain more accurate short term budgeting and financial reporting as well as long term assets management including analysis and forecasting funded projects each year. Overall and most importantly, the Mondelio solution is delivering effective control over long term planning.
Executive Chairman of Mondelio, Garth Laird, said Penrith City Council will be at the forefront of short and long range business planning in their sector. “Mondelio will enable the Council to meet the challenges of significant urban growth over the next decade,” he said.
For further information contact Garth Laird on (02) 9929 4799 or email garthl@mondelio.com
iPlatinum is Mondelio partner for Councils
iPlatinum, one of Australia’s leading IT services providers to the Local Government sector, is partnering with Mondelio to provide the Mondelio solution to councils. The company has offices in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne and more than 60 Local Government clients. Mondelio Executive Chairman, Garth Laird, said the partnership with iPlatinum would make it even easier for councils to implement Mondelio.
“iPlatinum is a reputable company and well respected across the Local Government sector,” he said. “They are highly experienced in Local Government and are able to help councils implement Mondelio quickly and easily.”
For further information please visit www.mondelio.com
* Copy supplied by Mondelio
