THE CHALLENGE
Collin County’s finance team maintained an impressive 20+ year streak of GFOA Distinguished Budget Presentation Awards, but their Excel-based workflow consumed valuable time on document assembly rather than analysis.
- Production over validation.ย Staff spent most of their time formatting and print-checking rather than verifying data accuracyย
- Annual chart reconstruction.ย Every fiscal year transition meant dismantling and rebuilding all charts and graphs from scratchย
- Inconsistent quarterly reports.ย Each analystย maintainedย separate spreadsheets for their departments, creating fragmented workflowsย
- Basic visualizations.ย Charts and graphs carried the unmistakable look of Excel exports, limiting professional presentation qualityย
THE SOLUTION
Collin County adopted Gravity to automate budget book production and transform their visual presentation capabilities. The system provided:
THE RESULTS
Collin County not only maintained their two-decade GFOA award streak but earned an additional distinction for performance measuresโdirectly attributed to Gravity’s enhanced graphics capabilities.
The improved visualizations allowed the team to clearly demonstrate increases and decreases, illustrate goal attainment, and present performance trends with unprecedented clarity. County commissioners and administrators praised both the visual quality and usability, specifically complimenting how easily they could navigate the automatically generated table of contents.
The County reclaimed approximately two weeks from their annual cycle, with the most recent budgetย representingย their smoothest production yetโrequiring fewer drafts than previous years.