The City of Chicago (the City) went live on Friday, May 11th with a new planning and budgeting solution that was designed and built by Clarity Partners (Clarity). In collaboration with the City, Clarity created a more user-friendly and modern tool to replace the previous system. This is the largest operating budget system investment in the history of the City’s Office of Budget and Management (OBM), the department responsible for preparing and managing the City’s annual budget.
Clarity worked closely with leadership across departments to plan, design and develop the solution. The new system was built with Oracle’s Hyperion Public Sector Planning and Budgeting solution and integrates with existing key systems employed by the City, including the Oracle E-Business Suite.
The City’s new solution consolidates information from legacy finance and HR systems to centralize metadata and budget data. The newly automated metadata loading functionality significantly reduces time spent on labor intensive and manual processes and increases productivity during the budgeting cycle. The City can now leverage customized analysis forms to improve data accuracy and completeness at both granular and summary levels. Clarity created an annual budget for the City based on the previous year’s budget, actuals and various compliance and regulatory assumptions, while enabling multi-fund position budget allocations and enhancing the City’s ability to track and audit changes to the budget process. Additionally, Clarity leveraged Adobe InDesign for the City’s budget book production, which will be available to the public.
About the City of Chicago Office of Budget and Management
The City of Chicago has over 35,000 employees and 45 major departments, with an annual budget exceeding 8.5 billion dollars. The Office of Budget and Management 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 on the OBM, visit their website.
About Clarity Partners
Clarity Partners is a Chicago-based, full-service management and information technology consulting firm that specializes in delivering comprehensive solutions to complex public sector and non-profit challenges. We provide management consulting, enterprise performance management, application development, website design and development, cloud solutions, project management, and IT staffing services to a diverse mix of businesses across the full spectrum of industries.