Introduction
The City of Chicago has over 35,000 employees and 45 major departments, with an annual budget exceeding $8.5 billion. The Office of Budget and Management (OBM) is responsible for preparing and implementing a balanced annual budget for the City. In addition, OBM evaluates the efficiency of all the City’s operations and drives management reforms when needed. For more information, visit the OBM website.
Challenges
The City previously employed a legacy budgeting system that had been developed in-house. This system was nearly 20 years old and built on a platform no longer supported by Oracle (Oracle Forms 6), and routine system upgrades increasingly threatened system performance. Furthermore, several new tools had been developed that could enhance the City’s budgeting processes (i.e. data validation and improved ad hoc analysis). As a result, the City requested an Oracle-supported solution that could more easily integrate with current and add-on technologies in the marketplace.
Project challenges included:
- Dated budgeting tool and siloed budgeting processes
- Decentralized data across departments
- Inconsistent data management practices across departments
- Time-consuming, labor intensive and manual processes
- Users with limited exposure to multidimensional database
Why Hyperion?
The City requested an Oracle budgeting solution that could integrate with the following city systems:
- Oracle E-Business Suite Financial Application modules
- Oracle E-Business Suite Human Resources module
- Oracle E-Business Suite Grants Accounting module
- Oracle E-Business Suite Advanced Procurement modules
Implementation & Deployment
Clarity Partners leveraged our proven, flexible implementation methodology. We established the parameters for how the project would be conducted and managed. From requirements gathering to design, we identified and prioritized business and technical requirements for packaging into deliverables. Clarity developed a prototype that users could test and incorporated feedback into issue resolution.
The deployed solution includes:
- Oracle’s Hyperion Public Sector Planning & Budgeting (PSPB)
- Integration of information from legacy Finance and HR systems to centralize metadata and budget data
- Customized analysis forms that improve data accuracy and completeness at both granular and summary levels
In addition to implementation, Clarity provided both admin and end user training.
Benefits
- Developed grant budget to enable the City to more accurately measure time and attendance entries, yielding efficient grant spending
- Provided more transparency into publicly consumed reporting
- Created automated process for personnel cost allocation to multiple funding sources
- Laid foundation to provide transparency on carryover balances
- Modernized technology platform to enable ad hoc analysis, data integration and enhanced end user experience
- Designed standardized hierarchical framework to improve reporting and analysis
- Substantially reduced data cleansing by automating data and metadata integration
What’s Next
Clarity will provide the City of Chicago with continued application support.
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