Customer story highlights

• Removed more than 600 scheduled monthly reports, reducing administrative burden.
• Empowered staff with self-service dashboards and real-time financial insight.
• Improved visibility of outstanding debt and financial performance across services.
• Enabled continuous improvement through in-house dashboard development and knowledge transfer.

About Blackpool Council

Blackpool Council serves a population of around 144,200 residents in the seaside town of Blackpool on England’s northwest coast.

The council provides nearly 200 services across the borough, from adult and children’s social care to education, highways maintenance, street cleaning, and more. It also manages a number of commercial operations, including the town’s tramway, airport, and two housing companies.

Supporting an organisation of this scale requires strong financial oversight and reliable information to inform effective planning and decision-making.

Learn more about Blackpool Council here.

The challenge: Moving beyond manual reporting

When Blackpool Council first implemented TechnologyOne’s OneCouncil solution, its priority was replacing legacy financial systems with a modern software capable of delivering reliable, integrated data.

In the early stages, the council focused on implementing core finance functionality, including Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable. However, reporting processes were still heavily dependent on scheduled reports produced by the finance team.

“Reports were dictated by corporate leadership timetables,” Adam McKnight at Blackpool Council explained.

“They were scheduled to run at a certain point every month, so we looked at reducing the admin and the burden across the accounts team and enabling those users to run the reports themselves.”

“We went live with the business-critical elements in terms of accounts payable and debtors. We could see the power of real-time reporting and had a view as to how dashboards would empower users, but at that point I don’t think we fully understood how we would fully utilise them.”

That changed as the organisation became more familiar with the platform.

The solution: Turning data into insight with dashboards

From the beginning, dashboards were a large part of Blackpool Council’s longer-term digital roadmap.

“One of the key benefits we saw with TechnologyOne was the ability to present data in dashboards,” Mr McKnight said. “So it was always part of our phase two plan to implement those.”

Once their financial data was fully established, the finance team began building dashboards that would give staff instant visibility into financial information.

“We are now able to empower users to access TechnologyOne at the click of a button and access the dashboards in one place with all real-time information.”

Rather than designing dashboards in isolation, the council adopted a co-production approach with budget holders and stakeholders.

“Accountants worked together to draft a dashboard between us that we thought would be beneficial,” explained Emma Reece, Accountant at Blackpool Council.

“That was rolled out to a small number of budget holders for their feedback. We’ve very much worked on a co-production basis.”

This collaborative approach helped ensure the dashboards reflected the real needs of those using them day-to-day.

The results: Self-service insight across the organisation

The introduction of dashboards has transformed how financial information is accessed and used across the council.

“By using dashboards, budget holders are now able to run those reports as and when they want, rather than waiting for predefined dates,” said Mr McKnight.

The impact on efficiency has been significant. Over time, the council has removed hundreds of scheduled monthly reports, eliminating large numbers of spreadsheets and manual reporting processes.

Staff across the organisation now have access to dashboards, providing greater transparency and control.

“Budget holders have access to the latest bits of budget monitoring information they may require, but end users can also self-serve through the dashboard looking at the purchase orders they’re responsible for and any outstanding debt that they’ve raised.”

“I think our greatest achievement is the implementation of TechnologyOne,” said Ms Reece. “What helps us succeed is the teamwork that we have and the drive to develop the systems and make it a much more convenient use of software for all of our end users.”

Looking ahead: Expanding insight beyond finance

Blackpool Council continues to explore new ways to extend the value of dashboards and data.

Future plans include introducing additional key performance indicators and integrating non-financial information alongside financial data.

“We’re now looking at some of the KPIs and potential late payments, retrospective orders,” the council explained.

Council is also exploring ways to combine financial data with service data from other departments.

“We’re potentially going to look at what non-financial data we can bring into our finance system, some adult social care or children’s social care data, so we’re not just looking at the numbers. We can compare non-financial data.”

A partnership focused on continuous improvement

For Blackpool Council, the relationship with TechnologyOne is built around long-term collaboration and shared goals.

“We don’t know what’s going to happen over the next 10 years,” said Ms Reece. “But what we need from a partner like TechnologyOne is the ability for them to evolve with us.”

The council values working with a partner that can support its evolving needs.

“If we have a vision of how we need to develop the system, we know that TechnologyOne should have that capability for us, we know that we can usually find a solution.”

With further functionality still to explore, Blackpool sees continued opportunities to improve.

“There’s a lot of functionality within TechnologyOne that we’ve still not fully utilised,” explained Mr McKnight. “We want to make sure when we’re in a partnership that we’re working on the same page and we have the same goals.”

Ultimately, the council’s transformation is about delivering better outcomes for its residents.

With real-time dashboards, streamlined reporting, and empowered staff, Blackpool Council now has greater visibility and control across its operations.

The result is a more agile council, better equipped to make informed decisions and continue delivering vital services to the community.