Newport is now integrating Advanced's Collaborative Planning system with Oracle Financials. With Collaborative Planning budget managers can review and update their own budgets and forecasts on an ongoing, rolling basis, enabling an instant view of the council's financial status.

In time, said Newport, the system will be used for building the council's budgets, and certain tasks such as inflationary calculations, which are currently pulled together by four different teams, will be automated by the system and done once rather than in duplicate.

With the finance teams no longer having to spend two weeks every month compiling and consolidating spreadsheets, their time will be freed-up for more strategic tasks, said Rushworth.

She said: "Collaborative Planning will enable us to move from functional finance teams to a more strategically-focused finance department. This change will allow finance professionals to be at the very heart of key decision making."

Last year, Newport was one of eight public sector organisations in south-east Wales to by the Welsh Assembly, as part of a five-year £14 million deal.