Family man Carlo Barnard, InzaloEMS’s Business Analytics Manager is an innovator. Every time he tells his friends and colleagues he has an idea, they say: not again!
But when he has an idea, he thinks about it for a long time before he decides whether it’s going to work. Needless to say, it always does. “I never give up looking for unique solutions to problems,” he states.
Barnard’s latest brainchild is a unique Business Intelligence system. It is in the final stages of testing and is an invention he has dreamed of implementing for a long time. Ultimately it will lead to the automation of reporting for municipalities saving the users a considerable amount of time compared to doing it manually. “Something completely revolutionary which will change and ease financial reporting for local governments. This will be a real break-through for them,” he says.
After completing his Bachelor of Accounting Science degree, Barnard started his career in local government as a revenue enhancement consultant and was bitten by that bug from the start. He became passionate about helping municipalities achieve Clean Audits and become financially viable. It was his first real experience in dealing with communities when he experienced their problems first hand, this was a way to help communities by showing that their municipality cared for them and managed their money responsibly.
He tells the story of how he and a municipal CFO once camped outside the Auditor General’s office in Bloemfontein to get the few remaining glitches in the audit resolved there and then. The Unqualified Audit that followed was an amazing achievement. That’s how far Carlo will go for his clients. “What I love about helping municipalities is that you get to restore the community’s faith in their local government.”
When he later became CFO of a municipality at the young age of 30, he saw how they could either benefit or burden their communities. Implementing functional, reliable technology was imperative in order to increase service delivery. “The InzaloEMS system is a robust integrated financial management system developed for municipal finances and business processes and has the best functionality. It cannot be manipulated and was my first choice.”
Barnard has continued exploring new tools to assist local governments with their finances and to become compliant with National Treasury regulations and reporting requirements. He has invented a model which is easy to implement and allows for real-time reporting at a click of a button. “This will free up time by semi-automating tasks so that time is rather spent on service delivery to all South Africans and overall strategic planning,” he says with a glowing smile. Just watch this space!