Situation:

Hagerty was asked by the Department of Public Works (DPW) in New Orleans, Louisiana to implement some post-Katrina accounting support. They needed to fix the DPW QuickBase® financial tracking system and improve internal business processes within the DPW fiscal operation.

Need:

Hagerty needed to use QuickBase to capture dates, payments, and invoice activity with sufficient information to identify the funding sources, projects, purchase orders, and invoice statuses. Without access to this information in a database, any subsequent analysis would be impossible.

Solution:

Hagerty provided both operational and analytical support to DPW.

The operational team reviewed invoices and processed payments, created requisitions for change orders, requested purchase order conversions, troubleshot aged invoices, managed the document control process, and supervised general database maintenance.

The analytical team provided technical, reporting, and analytical support to measure progress, identify bottlenecks, fulfill audit requests, and improve processes. They also processed all FEMA reimbursement requests, managed the DPW Revolver Cash Flow reports and processes, and acted as the fiscal liaison with state, federal, and local agencies as well as other departments and consultants within City Hall.

Outcome:

With the information obtained from QuickBase, Hagerty was able to reduce DPW’s average invoice processing time by 50%. It also created an audit trail by recording the payment vouchers and purchase orders that could easily tie back to the accounting records.

Hagerty’s work helped the City of New Orleans strengthen its ability to analyze, track, and report the status of projects, contracts, invoices, payments, and funding for all DPW and CDBG projects. Ultimately these improvements increased the State Revolving Account, which the City draws upon, from an $11 million deficit to a $10 million surplus.