Until recently, Fort Collins, Colorado, Senior Accounting Coordinator Renee Reeves was frustrated by the amount of time it took her to reconcile the city’s credit receipts with its bank records. But after a summer-long improvement project in the city’s Financial Services Division, she was able to celebrate a dramatic decrease from an average of 100 hours a month spent on this activity to only 65 hours in October 2022. The goal is to reduce the number of hours even further. “The primary issue was inconsistent processes, manual processes, and submissions that were often delayed or missed,” Reeves said. Having addressed many of these issues, Reeves found herself with more time to get her work done, and “this definitely decreased my stress,” she says.

Fort Collins is a prime example of an effort that is taking place in a number of cities and states to improve the smooth flow of their processes.

• Publication date: February 2023
• Authors: Katherine Barrett and Richard Greene