The Village of Montpelier, Ohio

Preparing for the New Normal

Location:          Williams County in Northwest Ohio                 

Employees:       45                               

Budget:             $12.8 Million

Services:          Water, sewer, electric, storm sewer, street, police, fire, and refuse.

Partnership:     Working with Software Solutions since 1999

Contact:            Kelly Hephner, CMC, MMC

Website:           www.montpelieroh.net              

Background:  Montpelier is a progressive Charter Village with a strong Manager form of government. The Village is served with excellent utilities including a low cost electric distribution system. The Village has a solid industrial nucleus and excellent location, with several major East-West and North-South highways, which include the Ohio Turnpike.

Recreational facilities include a municipal swimming pool featuring a 15 foot waterslide, a roller skating rink, and three challenging 18-hole golf courses located within a ten-mile radius of Montpelier.

The Village has superb cultural entertainment provided by the Williams County Playhouse and Williams County Historical Museum, both of which are located in the Village. The Williams County Fairgrounds is also located in Montpelier, which plays host to the Williams County Fair every year.

The citizens of Montpelier are proud of their strong historic past and are committed to preparing for the future.

Challenges:  Replacing aging client server technology was definitely a priority but the bigger challenge was to gain flexibility, efficiencies, and enhance the access to data for analysis and decision making.  The Village was also looking to extend their information system out to their departments so they could participate in processing and so that department heads would have immediate access to information for day-to-day operational activities.  Finally, the Village wanted to be able to leverage the internet to connect outlying buildings and to support unimpeded access to the system while working remotely. 

Solution:  The Village chose to implement the Visual Intelligence Portfolio from Software Solutions to address and overcome the challenges that they were up against.  This innovative suite of software applications features A³ Anytime, Anywhere Availability for access from anywhere in the world via internet connectivity.  Unique Intelligent Data Grids present data such the each user can determine what fields they wish to see and what format they wish to see that information in, with the ability to change that data view on the fly as often as desired.  All processes render output immediately on the screen in the form of an Intelligent Data Grid for immediate review and analysis, virtually eliminating the need for report printing.  Processes have been streamlined to eliminate steps and reduce the time required to produce a desired outcome.  There is a powerful workflow that integrates email for notification that moves decision making and input from one person to the next throughout the organization, decreasing the need for paper while increasing the speed at which items can move through the organization.  Finally, the Visual Intelligence Portfolio completely eliminates the need to open and close periods and the urgency to run processes or produce reporting on a time sensitive basis.  Multiple fiscal periods can be open simultaneously and transactions can be entered into past and future periods when desirable. 

Outcome:  Kelly Hephner, Director of Finance for Montpelier reports that the implementation has been a significant success.  "Our most recent Payroll was done start to finish in about 2 hours.  It used to take 4 hours after time entry was complete."   The Village of Montpelier has participated in both an Alpha and Beta process with Software Solutions in the development and implementation of the Visual Intelligence Portfolio Payroll product.  Kelly adds, "The Village of Montpelier has been privileged to be an alpha and beta partner for the VIP payroll.  The system is very different from what we were used to and did take some time to adjust.  Even though it involved a change to the way we do things, I am so glad that we took the time to try this program.  This payroll system is so much more efficient, saving hours in a payroll week.  The ability to drill down through screens, to see what you're looking for, to change things as you go and to go back to where you started with virtually just a couple of clicks of the mouse is phenomenal.  Reporting and exporting into different formats, such as excel, gives the finance department flexibility in how they reports look and feel.  They can be tailored to your management's preference.  Change for the better, yes; efficiency, most definitely."

Kelly highlights the flexibility of the system and its ability to make changes on the fly and applauds how easy it is to learn.  She says, "Processing is very different, but the results are fantastic.  The ability to go back and look at the details of every transaction is superb."  Kelly goes on to say, "Period end can become secondary so you can focus on more immediate tasks and we hardly ever print reports to use in processing, with even those that we will later use for audit we can print any time we want, now or in the future."  With Payroll up and running successfully the next step in the overall process will be to implement the Visual Intelligence Portfolio Accounting suite. 

Recommendations:  When asked what she would say to others who are thinking of moving to the Visual Intelligence Portfolio Kelly says, "What are you waiting for?  Don't be afraid.  It's not easy, but it's well worth the time."  She also advises, "Review your existing system and make all the changes you want to make before the conversion.  It will make it much easier and get you thinking about what's really important ahead of time."

The Visual Intelligence Portfolio Payroll system is obviously a success at the Village of Montpelier.  If you're ready to move forward and implement this revolutionary new product suite, contact us at sales@mysoftwaresolutions.com.  You can also contact Kelly at the Village of Montpelier to find out more about the implementation there.