Transformed performance management

Rugby BC
"Covalent is used to track disconnected departmental expenditure & income actual performance (automatically imported from its financial system) against budget. A revised forecast for future months is then calculated by adding the current variance and future target. We had an early-win when a departmental under-spend was clearly identified during the financial year using Covalent. This allowed us to reallocate the budget to another department that had overspent whereas in previous years we would only have uncovered that potential at year end, when of course it is too late.The CEO can now accurately monitor departmental budgets through Covalent in terms of actual expenditure, income and commitment against target."

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Pennaf Housing Group
"Prior to Covalent, although performance reporting to senior management was sufficient to prompt the right questions, reporting at manager, team leader and individual level was not sufficiently developed to easily provide the answers. Covalent gives us the ability to drill down from a top level overview of performance and to quickly identify and rectify areas of poor performance. Covalent also helps us to understand the reasons for these variances and to set appropriate targets based on historical experience."

Sedgemoor DC
"Prior to introducing Covalent in 2005, action plans were consolidated in three overflowing lever-arch files that were typically only updated annually. Now all actions that fall within the Performance Management framework are monitored online using Covalent. Every fortnight managers are presented with a list of their overdue actions. Exception reports from Covalent are used to identify under-performing areas, and if necessary these can be escalated, which could involve closer monitoring or the instigation of an improvement project. The results from using Covalent have been dramatic - although the total number of actions managed by the software has been steadily increasing, the number of overdue actions has decreased. At July 2009 the proportion of overdue actions was at its lowest level (7%) since the new framework was introduced and continues to steadily decline."

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Adur & Worthing Council Services
"Using Covalent to record due dates on complaints allows managers to see at-a-glance the traffic-lighted status of each complaint, thereby providing an early warning of service delivery failures, and ensuring targeted action where it's needed. By effectively handling customer complaints Covalent helps drive service improvements across the organisation. Managers also find it very convenient to have all appropriate supporting commentary and evidence in one place for ease of reference."

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Worthing BC
"Overall Covalent makes my job much easier and has proved vital for streamlining audits, as it cuts down both the preparation for the initial inspection and the interview process as well. The ability for users to upload relevant supporting evidence documents to back up self-assessment criteria has proved invaluable. Prior to a recent Audit Commission audit, we used Covalent to undertake a self-assessment in line with the Commission's Data Quality Key Lines of Enquiry (KLOEs). We gave the auditor remote access to the web-hosted Covalent site so that she could log in and view our information to identify the areas she wanted to discuss during the interview. As a result the subsequent onsite meeting was much more focused than in the past and relevant evidence was readily accessible on Covalent, which ultimately improved our score."

Crawley Borough Council
"Covalent proved extremely useful for the council as we can give auditors direct access to all our supporting information for self-assessments on the system. The auditors found it really helpful to be able to quickly and easily locate supporting evidence on how we had met inspection criteria. I would highly recommend using Covalent in this way."