Why the City of Portsmouth’s Budget Department Chose GovMax Over Their ERP

We recently had a conversation with Trey Burke, Budget Officer at the City of Portsmouth, to learn how GovMax is helping to systemize their budgeting process. 

With a total population of nearly 100,000 residents and the ninth most populous city in Virginia, budgeting efficiency is important to Burke’s office. Just like with any other budget department for cities of a similar size, there’s never enough staff or time for day-to-day budget management. So the solutions they use should improve the team’s workflow and eliminate tedious processes. For the budget department, they came to that realization after years of spreadsheet budgeting. Simple functions like preparing budget documents and creating detailed charts took more time than necessary with spreadsheets.

The City also uses an ERP for government-wide administration, which also includes a budget module, but also sought a standalone solution that was budgeting only.

When they made the switch to GovMax, Burke’s office was able to streamline the entire document preparation process.

“It became complicated to maintain version control of spreadsheets across different budget teams, but GovMax allowed multiple accounts with controlled access to collaborate on the same documents without going back and forth. This took a huge load off the shoulders of the budget office as we’re responsible for tracking budget data for over 30 departments,” shares Burke.

Burke sees GovMax as a significant value-add since his office only has two personnel overseeing budget functions. He also likes that budget forecasting is a lot easier with GovMax since a lot of the data is already available within the module and can be easily adjusted as needed.