How Warwickshire County Council switched several hours a week to the click of a button with HeyCentric.

Project duration

8 Weeks

Product used

Income Manager

WebPayments

Key Results

70% automatic allocations

It gives Senior Leadership the assurance and visibility that when they look at their budgets and their forecasts, they know with a degree of certainty that the income there is correct, that it’s been brought in correctly, and  that it’s been coded correctly. We know that when we raise bills to customers we have an easy and simple methodology to collect this income and can confidently reconcile it back to our ERP.

Stephen Robbins,
Finance Projects and Systems Manager

The Challenge

Over half a million residents are served by Warwickshire County Council. The finance team deal with a wide variety of finance streams on a daily basis, including payments, business tariffs, parking fees for country parks, or collecting funds for a number of other service areas including social care, education, and libraries.

As part of a larger technology modernisation project, Warwickshire was seeking to upgrade from their on-premises Unit4 solution to a new income manager system that would prepare them for the future when ‘they are expected to be able to do more with less’. In addition to managing all of these income streams, it had to be able to handle cheques and cash returns, online payments, standing orders and direct debits, all of which would need to be achieved with seamless integration with their existing ERP system.

“Previously, we had a lot of manual processes, which took an awful lot of staff time to clear our invoices and for bank reconciliation. While we didn’t have a significant backlog, it just meant that the existing processes were time consuming.. So it was clear at the point when we came to review that we wanted to move to something which would allow a lighter staff touch, less maintenance, cleaner and more straight through processing and allow us to free our resources to do more value added work around invoices and collecting debt”

Stephen Robbins
Finance Projects and Systems Manager

The Approach

It took 8 weeks to implement HeyCentric IncomeManager in Warwickshire County Council and Warwickshire Pension Fund in July 2023.

The key objectives were:

  • Remove labour intensive tasks
  • For the council to be able to maintain the system themselves and puts the power into users hands
  • Provide the organisation with complete visibility over their income and cash position

At the same time, Warwickshire County Council was migrating to Unit4 cloud, so the challenging process involved migrating first to a SQL server and then to Unit4 Cloud.

Having a HeyCentric team dedicated to Warwickshire, the team was able to work closely with the council’s IT, Finance and Financial Systems teams forming a focused task force to complete the project. HeyCentric is well versed in Unit4 Cloud and provided Warwickshire with guidance and support throughout both phases.

Because HeyCentric’s expert team understands how challenging a time like this can be, their team made it their highest priority to be flexible with deadlines and to provide speedy guidance and support whenever needed. Working together, Warwickshire County Council and HeyCentric achieved a seamless implementation.

The biggest surprise was how relatively easy and painless the implementation was. With various other workstreams of this large technology project to juggle, HeyCentric was the easy part. It went to plan, delivered on time and we managed to get working at the first go. Which is always a pleasant surprise when you’re doing a project of that scope!

Stephen Robbins
Finance Projects and Systems Manager

Project results

Since Warwickshire transitioned to HeyCentric’s IncomeManager and WebPayments on the cloud, they’ve seen a significant reduction in maintenance and benefit from seamless updates. This move has also led to impressive results, including a dramatic increase in automatic allocations, which have risen from 0 to 65% since implementation. This number continues to grow, with further plans in place to increase this percentage, allowing the finance team to focus on more value-added tasks.

The solution has made a noticeable difference for the end users, simplifying their day-to-day work and improving efficiency. The senior leadership team now has confidence in a system that is fit for the future, enabling them to evolve and adapt to technological advancements while continuing to streamline their operations. These improvements align with the ongoing goal of achieving more with less.

HeyCentric’s commitment to customer collaboration has been evident throughout the process. From the beginning, they’ve been open and honest about the functionality, what works, the development plan, and areas needing further consideration. Their client management has been exceptional, providing flexible support when deadlines changed and ensuring resources were available for a smooth onboarding process. The entire implementation journey has been seamless, reinforcing the value of HeyCentric’s approach and the success of the transition.

“The best thing about HeyCentric since we’ve gone live is the increase in the rates of invoice of payments that have been auto-matched on our system, which has allowed us to free up our resources. It means that we’ve had less touch to do. We’ve had less suspense accounts as well. So it’s been fantastic to see how much income we’ve been able to auto-match and make clean.”

Stephen Robbins
Finance Projects and Systems Manager

“The auto matching is the best part of Heycentric. Also the option of payment cross referencing means the matching can improve even more over time. I also like that you can easily move around data columns in all the screens so the data can be set to the user’s preference. It has improved our day to day allocation of our bank statement. It has allowed us to auto match income in a variety of ways with results ranging from 50% – 80% of the statement auto matched.”

Craig Fletcher
Income & Debt Recovery Team Manager

Future Plans

Warwickshire have a lot of processes that they are looking to update and have taken the time to see how HeyCentric could be used in various scenarios in order to further improve these processes. Currently, they are developing a project to integrate HeyCentric X-Pay with their CRM solution, enabling them to automate customer payments through email journeys, and that is just the beginning!

We understand the challenge

Over half a million residents are served by Warwickshire County Council. The finance team deal with a wide variety of finance streams on a daily basis, including payments, business tariffs, parking fees for country parks, or collecting funds for a number of other service areas including social care, education, and libraries.

As part of a larger technology modernisation project, Warwickshire was seeking to upgrade from their on-premises Unit4 solution to a new income manager system that would prepare them for the future when ‘they are expected to be able to do more with less’. In addition to managing all of these income streams, it had to be able to handle cheques and cash returns, online payments, standing orders and direct debits, all of which would need to be achieved with seamless integration with their existing ERP system.

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