Forward-Thinking Manager Changes Vision of One Integrated Cost-tracking Application Into Reality

CITY OF ALMA, Michigan - CitiTech Systems, Inc. - Phillip Moore, Assistant City Manager and Finance Director of Alma, Michigan, had a dream. His city was doing work orders manually, using one software application to capture costs, another for fleet maintenance, and another for payroll purposes, and then doing the invoicing for those costs by hand! They also needed an automated Work Order system which could track citizen requests, access that Work Order information when doing work against those requests, survey the citizens about the results, and track those statistics. Phil knew software existed which could "do it all" without bothersome duplicate entry and paper shuffling, and set out to find it.

Phil saw CitiTech Management Software as the solution. Being a small city with a population of only 9,275 people and 122 employees, he had to be creative with his budget. He liked the fact that he could start with the basic system, and add modules as he could afford them. He began by purchasing the basic system, two multi-user licenses, and the Work Order module. Since all modules purchased in the future instantly inherit CitiTech's functionality, he plans to purchase additional modules (such as Utilities and Inspections) and more multi-user licenses next fiscal year, as funds become available.

In order to learn how to use the system to its fullest potential, he also had CitiTech Systems train representatives from each department, who, once comfortable working with it, will train others.

The process is now simple: a city employee receives a call from a citizen, and enters a Work Order into CMS. She assigns it to a person, crew, or department, and prints it. Since CMS has report writing capability, the Work Order can be modified to meet the needs of the department. Also, since the Work Order contains all information the worker is likely to need, including the problem, physical location, activity, priority, due date, and even citizen information, this one piece of paper replaces alot of "sticky notes". There is even an area on the form where the foreman can enter work notes, capture labor, equipment, and material information, and annotate whether the Work Order was completed.