Thurrock Council is the unitary authority for the Borough of Thurrock, delivering key services that support everyday life—from education, social care, and housing to regeneration, environmental protection, transport infrastructure, and community wellbeing.
Following the successful renewal of the Beyond Forecasting & Budget Management Application through G-Cloud 14, we recently caught up with Sima Khiroya from Thurrock Council to discuss their experience with our solution. As a long-standing user of Beyond Forecasting & Budget Management, Thurrock Council continues to drive greater efficiency, accuracy, and transparency across its financial planning and budgeting processes.
Read how Beyond Forecasting has enabled the council to enhance strategic decision-making, deliver measurable performance improvements, and strengthen financial governance and a reflection on the value of our ongoing partnership, continuous support and development.
I would recommend Beyond for any Local Authority that does not have existing forecasting functionality built into their existing financial system. With continuous improvements, it allows for a system that is evolving but provides the key functionality for budget holders and finance staff to enter forecasts, produce budget management data and monitor KPI information via dashboards. The team at Beyond are responsive to changes required and suggestions for improvement. They are fully engaged with the requirements of the business and have a can do attitude. Sima Khiroya, Assistant Director Financial Management & Procurement
“You’ve been with us since 2018 and have seen the Forecasting & Budget Management product evolve through multiple GCloud frameworks. How has your experience with the product changed over the years?”
I joined Thurrock Council in July 2024 and began working with the Beyond team on improvements to the forecasting and budget management product. The team have worked with the Council in developing the dashboard offer to budget holders as well as introducing a capital forecasting module, enhancing dashboards and drill-down functionality.
We have also recently introduced an email post functionality via Beyond and KPI monitoring reporting to allow noncompliance with forecast entering to be monitored.
Capital Forecasting
Forecasting Home
Forecasting Financials
“We’ve worked closely with the Thurrock team to understand your needs and to also introduce enhancements—can you share how that collaboration has impacted your operations or outcomes and how your experience has been working with Beyond ?”
The enhancements made has allowed capital forecasting to be rolled out to project budget holders to allow for monitoring to be reported via the system rather than manually. This has allowed for ownership of project forecasting to be devolved down to budget holders to allow for close alignment to the finance business partnering model. Drill down functionality in all areas of Beyond allows budget holders to see actual transactions within the system related to line items they are querying to ensure forecasts can be entered accurately. The email functionality now allows us to send key messages and alerts out to all budget holders via the system and allows them to see these in the system.
The Team at Beyond always act promptly to any requests for further upgrades, provide a personal approach to queries and requests and understand the key components of the business, which assists us when making key changes.
Forecasting Landing Page
“What specific benefits or improvements have you seen in your organisation for users, as a result of using our Forecasting & Budget Management product?”
The users of the system now have an enhanced dashboard and drill-down functionality available to them. The system is easy to operate and provides all the essential information a budget holder requires for accurate forecasting.
Working with Thurrock Council has been a fantastic example of collaboration in action. Together, we’ve built on the Forecasting & Budget Management solution to make it more powerful, more intuitive, and more connected to the Council’s day-to-day operations. It’s great to see how the enhancements—from dashboards and capital forecasting to KPI monitoring—are making a real difference for budget holders and finance teams. Brendan Flanagan, Director
Find out more about Beyond Forecasting and Budget Management hereor contact us at Beyond to find out what we can do for your organisation.
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