CFO Insights is an online financial analysis tool that provides local authorities with a three-dimensional view of financial information, outcomes, and their socio-economic context.
Poole Borough Council was a unitary authority and is now part of Bournemouth, Christchurch, and Poole Council in Dorset
Poole has a population of around 140,000 residents
Poole is a tourist resort, attracting visitors with its large natural harbour, history, the Lighthouse arts centre, and Blue Flag beaches.
The council used CFO Insights to gain access to key financial data and benchmarking information and contextualise it alongside performance and outcomes. This process identified new trends and patterns, which improved decision making.
At the time, the council was facing a reduction in core government funding, equating to a loss of £230 per household each year. As a result, it needed to make savings of £12 million per annum over the next three years.
The council had previously tried to contextualise spend through sourcing outcomes data to get buy-in for the financial benchmarking that they already held. This was a time consuming and labour intensive process, and it was difficult to align spend to appropriate outcomes and data sources.
CFO insights built a bridge between financial and performance teams by providing context around the financial information through outcomes and characteristics data. This gave the council more time to identify and analyse the trends they saw in it. They also had access to a larger scale of data than they would have reasonably been able to achieve when sourcing independently.
The council now has concise, focused reports across its services that deliver challenge and stimulate new lines of enquiry. The contextual data generated by CFO insights make it easier for service managers to run external comparisons. They've also used the tool to identify how changes in spend are likely to impact outcomes – providing an evidence base for decision making.
