In the municipal landscape, everything has to be increasingly faster, more digital and with fewer officials. This requires flexible IT solutions to integrate existing systems and processes without time-consuming implementation processes. The Municipality of Enschede chose Novulo's flexible software to modernize its Planning & Control process, and did so in just a few weeks.

“Novulo was a revelation for our officials. Everyone was able to work with it smoothly and was very enthusiastic.” Martin van der Ham - Senior Strategic Advisor to the Municipality of Enschede

Municipality of Enschede modernizes Planning and Control process with Novulo software

Planning and Control is one of the core processes of every municipality, where all activities and expenditures are planned and accounted for. However, the resulting reports are very labour-intensive to make, partly due to the many activities, stakeholders and organisational layers.

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For the Municipality of Enschede, there was a great need to change that situation. It sometimes took up to six months to deliver reports, so the data was already outdated when it was considered by the city council. Martin van der Ham, Head of Financial Services Center at the Municipality of Enschede, was therefore commissioned to develop a new way of working that was faster, more efficient and more customer-friendly. Together with André Folbert, senior P&C advisor and working as project leader for this project, after a careful consideration process, they chose Novulo's model-driven software from Enschede to streamline the entire P&C process in an integrated web application.

Innovative software company

In the old situation, Planning and Control at the Municipality of Enschede was a time-consuming task. A lot of information was collected manually in Word and Excel files, followed by many rounds of feedback and changes, which also had to be processed manually. “An awful lot of people are involved in municipal reports,” says Van der Ham. “There are countless questions going back and forth, and it takes a lot of time to retype numbers because they are not linked to our source systems. That whole process had to be faster and, in addition, with fewer errors.” Van der Ham had been familiar with the innovative software company from Twente since Novulo was founded, but now saw an opportunity for serious cooperation.

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During the first meetings, Novulo showed a test application for the P&C process, in which things could be adjusted very quickly. “Novulo's great flexibility really appealed to us. You can't easily shape most municipal applications to your own needs, and you also get all kinds of functions that you don't need. We asked Novulo to build only the software we needed. We didn't want an overlap with our existing applications, and that's what they did.”

Model-driven software

Due to the time pressure to improve the P&C process, Van der Ham was able to negotiate directly with Novulo without first drawing up detailed project plans and functional requirements. Although some people preferred a traditional software package over a model-driven software solution, Van der Ham was convinced that Novulo was the right choice: “What makes Novulo so unique is that they offer an online platform that allows you to build business applications very flexibly and customized based on components. You can take a lot of functionality off the shelf in no time, and all you have to do is develop the things that aren't there yet. That works really fast. So you can choose exactly what you need. Nothing more, nothing less and always fully integrated. In my opinion, that's where the big strength lies.”

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Model-driven software has the main advantages of flexibility and implementation speed. But the fact that you can put together applications yourself sometimes scares off, according to Folbert: “If you choose model-driven software, you should initially invest in implementation. In other words, you have to explain what you need and what exactly needs to be built. A traditional software package has often already defined many things for you. But that is also the weakness. You will then have to adapt to the software package.

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With Novulo, we were able to choose exactly the software components we needed and set up the processes and applications exactly as we wanted. Progressive insight and feedback from users could also be added or modified over and over again without customization using new or modified components.” During the implementation phase, a basic version of the application was delivered within two weeks. It was fully focused on co-creation and offering an integrated online environment where all involved officials could work together on reports. This also included links with the financial administration, so that financial data no longer had to be entered manually.

Faster reports

Because the Municipality of Enschede saw results of the project within a few weeks, internal support for Novulo's software grew rapidly. “The delivery of the first version of Novulo was a revelation for our officials,” says Folbert. “We had not organized any training courses, but only made an A4 sheet with some tips and tricks. Nevertheless, everyone was able to work with it without any problems and was very enthusiastic. I was genuinely surprised how smoothly that went.”

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Thanks to the new Planning & Control application, preparing reports is now much faster and with fewer errors. Van der Ham: “Previously, around six project leaders were working on this, now another one and a half. This is largely due to Novulo's IT solution.”

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In addition, the new system has also provided a lot of transparency within the municipality. Everyone can now see the data that is relevant to them, including changes made by colleagues through a continuously maintained log. Van der Ham: “You have to be authorized to change certain things in other people's texts, so that corrects itself. It is a self-regulating system, which also greatly benefits our financial department. Everything is now kept in a system, so you can always see when something has been entered or changed, and by whom.”

Software community

The officials who work with Novulo are very positive about Novulo and regularly express the wish to integrate more work into the system. Van der Ham: “It's a kind of snowball effect, and we also spread that enthusiasm to other municipalities. For example, we regularly receive requests to come and see how we work here. Of course, we are open to that. Municipalities that are going to use Novulo will no longer have to reinvent the wheel and can easily piggyback on an application that runs well for us. And we also hope to eventually benefit from functionality that is being developed for other municipalities in Novulo. I like the idea of collaborating with other municipalities in this way, and being part of a kind of software community through Novulo.”

Dot on the horizon

Since the Planning and Control project within the Municipality of Enschede was completed, Van der Ham is already busy building a new municipal application for Purchase to Pay with Novulo: “Our purchasing process is still very ad-hoc at the moment. Everyone buys in their own way. That is not efficient and sometimes things go wrong. With Novulo, we want to make this a streamlined process with a complete workflow. In addition, we also want to lay down all obligations here. We are still entering them all manually now.

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The new system will be much more efficient and will also help us, for example, to purchase from the right suppliers and not miss out on discounts.” According to Van der Ham, there are still too few good IT solutions in this area: “There are Purchase to Pay solutions, for example Coda, but they are usually a bit old-fashioned and do not meet our specific requirements. That's when we came back to Novulo because we wanted an application that really had to work for us.” As a dot on the horizon, however, Van der Ham and Folbert see even more opportunities to modernize the municipal processes. In the future, for example, they want to make more and more information available to aldermen, council members and citizens via mobile devices, such as tablets.

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Van der Ham also wants to develop internal management dashboards: “Our budget holders and managers need good management information. Dashboards with all kinds of meters, graphs and charts are then ideal, and we can achieve them quite easily with Novulo. I also appreciate how customer-friendly Novulo thinks along with us about these kinds of issues. They understand that it will make their software platform richer if we use it to develop a new application. In that sense, we help each other, and we are happy to spread that to other municipalities.”

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Folbert wants to further digitize the P&C process by connecting strategic guidance by council with operational guidance and accountability by the departments: “Wouldn't it be great if individual employees could easily get insight into how their daily activities contribute to the city council's plans and goals? By also including this process in Novulo, it is possible to serve various target groups from one integrated system.”