City of St. Albert
Case Study: City of St. Albert
Situation
The community of St. Albert, northwest of Edmonton, Alberta, is the fifth largest city in the province and has the highest proportions of green space anywhere. It’s also a city, along with many other Alberta communities, that is experiencing good growth – between 3% and 4% annually for the past five years. Approximately 57,000 people now reside in St. Albert; many were attracted there because of the conscientious city planning that makes it an ideal place to raise a family.
Results and Benefits
Dealing with steady growth requires careful planning, commitment, skill and business knowledge. Having the right tools to help meet these demands is critical for success. In the case of St. Albert, implementing and using Agresso’s comprehensive and powerful financial suite was a key step. According to Doug Lynkowski, Director of Financial Services who has been with the city for the past 10 years, running Agresso Business World has made the financial services department and city planners much more efficient.
”Overall, Agresso will give us better reporting capabilities and data
capture and retrieval. This will be used for longer range financial
planning,” says Lynkowski. “And in the future we’re looking at
integrating the software with an infrastructure management system
that will identify funding gaps and allow for a more carefully planned
response as well as having good Commerce potential.”
Other immediate benefits with Agresso were a reduction in the number of accounts in the chart of accounts, fewer paper copies, superior integration of accounts payable and logistics, and increased purchasing information. All this has resulted in more time allocated to planning and strategy key ingredients for a growing city.
Users of AGRESSO also found the ad-hoc report capabilities of the software to be superior to other systems and, importantly, could better use on-line information for financial transactions through the drill down feature. "Being on a budget ourselves, we were very concerned about getting a system that was comprehensive, powerful, and yet affordable," says Lynkowski, noting that the implementation was very smooth and Agresso was "very good to work with." "We are very happy with the features, the ease of use and the flexibility of the system," Lynkowski says. And most important, with AGRESSO running the business end of things, the financial services department and the City of St. Albert have become more efficient. "We are very happy we switched over," says Lynkowski, "AGRESSO has proven to be a comprehensive and powerful financial suite that gives us the flexibility to change as our city grows." While St. Albert will most definitely change over the next few years, it will continue to be known as a growing city that plans carefully. Agresso is proud to be part of this.
