AGEN CY T Y PE
Northglenn, Colorado
Finance Office Trail Blazes
Operational Reporting
Pioneers in a Pioneer State
The tight-knit community of Northglenn,
Colorado is situated on the front range of the
Rocky Mountains just fifteen minutes north of
booming Denver. With beautiful places to hike
and bike in the summer, access to world-class
skiing in the winter, and a thriving business
community, Northglenn’s residents report deeply
enjoying their quality of life.
However, the city’s residents enjoy more than
just a stunning view of the Rockies and 300
days of sunshine a year — they are also the
beneficiaries of a top-notch municipal finance
office, the vanguard of the city’s financial health.
Northglenn Director of Finance Jason Loveland
has spent years promoting economic growth and
development in the city. Thanks to Loveland
and his team, Northglenn was the first city in
Colorado to use the OpenGov Smart Government
Platform. Loveland continues to innovate
in Colorado by working with his staff and
OpenGov to create custom internal reports that
increase operational effectiveness and facilitate
data-driven decisions.
Northglenn, Colorado Finance Office Trail Blazes Operational Reporting
© 2017 OpenGov • opengov.com
City Government
POP U L AT I ON
36,000
ANNUAL B U D G ET
$50 Million
Simplifying Internal Operations
for Better Budgeting
Northglenn hosts its accounting data in
Springbrook, an enterprise resource planning
(ERP) software system focused on local
governments. Loveland explained that “although
all the data lives in the general ledger software,
it’s hard to get much insight from it. You are not
going to do a huge data dump of your general
ledger into an Excel sheet and create hundreds
of pivot tables and layer charts and graphs on
top of it.” He was searching for a solution to get
more out of his accounting data when he heard
about OpenGov. “Two days later, I called and
signed up,” he recalled.
OpenGov allows Loveland to view Northglenn’s
multi-fund departmental budgets and easily
compare data from any account. Such nonhierarchical access to the city’s Chart of Accounts
allows him to gain direct visibility into any part
of his organization. “To have everything mapped
how you want it is tremendously helpful, and the
visualizations on top of that provide an extra level
of functionality,” Loveland explained. This has
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Understand Northglenn’s investment decisions in seconds and compare them to past decisions using OpenGov.
not helped only him, but also the organization
as a whole. He noted, “I look at numbers all day
and expect to as part of my job. But when we are
taking information to council, the City Manager,
and department heads, it’s helpful to share
financial information visually. It makes my job
easier and it helps them do their jobs better.”
“By giving directors and others within their
departments a better understanding of the
data that’s in the general ledger software, we
have made it easier for them to draw up their
budgets,” Loveland said. “It has saved us a
tremendous amount of time over the old way
of doing it without this tool.” He notes that
OpenGov can help the team better manage
Northglenn’s finances. “With OpenGov, it is
easier to identify where we could be better
allocating our resources.”
Northglenn, Colorado Finance Office Trail Blazes Operational Reporting
© 2017 OpenGov • opengov.com
“With OpenGov, it’s easier to identify where we
could be better allocating our resources.”
JASON LOVELAND
Director of Finance, Northglenn, CO
Reporting Non-Financial Data
To help gain better insight into the city’s water
usage, Loveland created a report in OpenGov
that displayed data on water consumption
and production dating back to 1989. “We are
producing and consuming the same amount
of water as 25 years ago, but we keep acquiring
water. I just wanted to know why,” Loveland
said. He was the first OpenGov user to create
this report, which was also one of the platform’s
first Internet of Things” use cases. Sensors in
the water treatment plant gather production
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Break down expenditures to better understand how individual decisions form a greater picture.
“Transforming data into a visual and dynamic
format adds great value.”
JASON LOVELAND
Director of Finance, Northglenn, CO
data and report how much water is purified and
sent out to the public for use. Sensors in the
pipes collect consumption data by reading how
much water each building uses, informing the
city about whom to bill.
With the water consumption and production
report, the city staff can view water production
by season over the last twenty-six years, enabling
personnel to make more informed decisions
about acquiring water rights. The city can also
view consumption by building type, such as
single-family unit, multi-family apartment,
and commercial office, which facilitates better
forecasting of the city’s water revenue. Loveland
said the answer to his question about water
rights is a bit technical and complicated, but
that “it’s still good to ask those questions
and make sure that the council and staff
understand how that works.”
A Tool For Economic
Development
Loveland’s team also plans to use OpenGov
as a tool to enhance economic development.
After creating his report on water consumption
and production, Loveland is working with
his Economic Development and Planning
Departments to import historical property
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See expenditures and drill down immediately for more context that facilitates informed decisions.
valuation data. This will help guide decisions on
urban renewal projects. He also wants to create
a sales-tax-by-industry report to determine
which industries are generating the most
revenue for the city and what kinds of businesses
Northglenn should seek to attract. Loveland said,
“transforming the data into a visual and dynamic
format adds great value.”
Loveland explained that the true test of OpenGov
will come when there’s another economic
downturn and everyone in the organization and
community is fighting even harder for their share
of limited resources. “The reason I want to do a
lot with OpenGov now, and not wait until there’s
a crisis is that the time at which we’re most going
to need OpenGov is also the time at which we’ll
be least able to think about it. We’ll need to just
have all of that information in front of us so we
can act intelligently rather than with panic.”
RESULTS
Data-Driven Budgeting. Northglenn, CO used the OpenGov Smart Government Platform to improve its
budgeting process by making financial data more accessible and easier to share.
Improved Reporting and Critical Insights. Creating unique targeted reports allowed Northglenn to
investigate critical resource allocation and plan accordingly.
Revenue Forecasting. Using OpenGov, Northglenn bolstered its financial analyses and planning
with economic data.
© 2017 OpenGov • opengov.com
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