Municipal Solutions

Richard Bienvenue, CPA, and partner in the firm Thevenin, Lynch, Bienvenue, LLP, is the auditor for over 100 municipal entities in Massachusetts, and several in New Hampshire. He is intimately familiar with municipal process, and in his travels from town hall to town hall, he's had many a discussion with town managers and administrators about their needs.

During the course of those discussions, he's heard so many times about the need for a constituent complaint tracker. In our own internal discussions, we started with that notion, and by the time we were through wrapping our brains around municipal needs, we had added a projects and tasks feature, a shared calendar, an internal messaging system, and more. However, we never lost track of the fact that this was to be a system specifically for municipal entitles - - towns, cities, water districts, fire districts, school districts.

Thus was CRMunicipal born.

We have more plans for municipal software solutions, and development is already under way for a planning tool to assist towns to prepare for the future. An Ongoing Public Employee Benefits calculator tool will be ready later in 2008, in time to meet the requirements of municipal planning and budgeting for the future expenses.

Check out CRMunicipal

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CRMunicipal is the First CRM system of its kind, designed and built for Municipalities everywhere. “Constituent Relations Management” (the “CRM” in our name) is an important part of every city and town's daily work, and CRMunicipal is built around that concept. The system doesn't stop there, though. Budget season, the work of Finance Committees, Department Heads and Town Accountants, and the general development of shared policy planning are as integral to a city and town's regular work as is the daily management of town affairs. CRMunicipal is built to facilitate that shared work as well.

Every municipality has to resolve constituent complaints, and the system is designed for that task with a dedicated tracking feature. More, though, every municipality prepares an annual budget, and all department heads participate in that process. CRMunicipal is a perfect tool for that project, with its Project and Task Management features, its shared documents and files features, its shared common calendar, and its secure internal messaging system. The same would hold true, frankly, for any short- and long-range planning project, no matter the nature of that project - - building, property maintenance, zoning, licensing, you name it.

CRMunicipal is in the final stages of development and is expected to be available for BETA testing in the spring of 2008. It will be available for actual use before the beginning of the 2009 municipal fiscal year in July.

	Home Projects Files Calendar Messages

With new regulations about to take effect requiring municipalities to plan and budget for Ongoing Public Employee Benefits (OPEB), new tools will be necessary to help cities and towns in that planning process. Actuarial tables, health insurance costs, life expectancies not only of public employees but also of their spouses, make the calculations a daunting task requiring actuaries and accountants.

OPEB Online will help in that planning process for municipalities of under 100 employees. Data entry will be simple and intuitive, on screens designed to be friendly for the users. The results will be detailed in the reports, and as many “what-ifs” thereafter will help in future decision-making.

This Planning Tool is under development - - the math formulas, the tables, the algorithms, on the one hand, and the User Interfaces, on the other. A mid-late spring 2008 release is anticipated, and accounts will most probably be made available on a year-to-year basis at an affordable price.

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