Case study: Infor EPM as a fast and accurate scenario modelling and projection tool

Ever wondered how your council rates are determined?

EPM (Enterprise Performance Management) software is one of the key tools used to ensure rigorous and expansive rate levers are modelled and validated.

Read on to see how. 

There's more to your rates notice than a formula

Most people pay their council rates without giving much thought to where the number came from. There's an assumption that it's straightforward property value, a multiplier, done. The reality is considerably more complex. Behind that figure is a months-long process of scenario modelling, forecasting, and financial planning that most ratepayers and many finance professionals have never had reason to think about. 

It's also, as it turns out, a compelling illustration of what modern enterprise performance management (EPM) software is capable of. Because if a purpose-built EPM platform can handle the complexity of modelling rates across tens of thousands of properties under a hard annual deadline, it can handle most of what finance teams across any sector are still doing in spreadsheets. 

How councils calculate your property rates 

Council rates aren't a single calculation applied uniformly across a community. A typical mid-size Australian council manages tens of thousands of individual property assessments. From residential, commercial, rural, industrial, and everything in between, and each is classified differently, valued differently, and potentially rated differently.  

The starting point is the rateable valuation: a figure derived from land value, capital improved value, or site value depending on the state and the council's chosen approach.  

Some councils use a single valuation method across all properties; others apply different methods to different rate categories. And because property markets move, valuations are updated periodically, which means the base data a council is working from can shift significantly from one rating period to the next. This is a challenge for planning if you don’t have certainty about revenue available for the coming planning cycles.  

On top of the valuation base sits the rating structure itself. Most councils use differential rating which means different rate categories attract different rates in the dollar. A commercial property pays at a different rate to a residential one; a rural holding is rated differently again. Within those categories, there may be sub-categories, minimum rates below which no property falls, regardless of valuation, and rate caps that limit how much any individual ratepayer's bill can increase each year.  

Councils in Victoria, for example, operate under a rate cap set by the state government, meaning the total revenue a council can raise is itself constrained. This means they need to build this ceiling into their modelling.  

Then there are supplementary assessments: new developments, subdivisions, or re-zoned properties that come onto the rate roll mid-year and need to be incorporated into the model.  

If a councils runs a full rates review, meaning a more fundamental examination of the entire rating framework is undertaken rather than just an annual update, they will need to be modelling new scenarios such as whether to introduce new rate categories, collapse existing ones, shift the balance between residential and commercial contributions, or change the valuation driver altogether.  

A two or three-year averaging approach to valuations, designed to smooth the impact of sharp market movements on ratepayers, adds another layer of complexity. It requires modelling not just what properties are worth now, but what the averaged figure looks like across multiple valuation cycles and how that flows through to revenue. 

All of this needs to be resolved, validated, and defensible, before a single rates notice is issued. And it needs to happen within a defined annual window, under legislative timelines, with a community and an elected council expecting the right answer. 

Scenario modelling at the scale the problem demands

This is where an EPM solution earns its place. The AcQuum Infor EPM Rates Modelling Application, built in partnership with Infor Pathway (their source of financial and LGA data) and developed collaboratively with Australian councils, is a purpose-built planning environment that replaces the spreadsheet-based approach most councils currently use. What it enables isn't just faster calculation, it's a fundamentally different quality of decision-making. 

It provides a real-world test case for the power of the Infor EPM platform.  

With Infor EPM, a rates officer can create multiple independent scenarios, adjust rate drivers such as rate-in-the-dollar, minimum rates, valuation averaging over two or three years, CPI uplift, projected growth and immediately see the projected revenue impact. Scenarios can be compared side by side.  

A council can test dozens of options in a day (instead of months) and arrive at a decision with far greater confidence than any spreadsheet process allows. 

The platform's scenario management is also built for real-world use: each model carries its own status, description, and annotation history. Decision-making is documented as it happens. Any qualified officer can follow the workflow not just the person who built the original model. 

Forecasting with evidence, not assumptions

Running scenarios is one thing. Knowing that the chosen scenario will deliver the projected revenue is another. For councils, this is where the integration between Infor EPM and Infor Pathway (their source of financial and LGA data) becomes particularly powerful. Parameters from the selected model can be exported from EPM and imported into Pathway as a test set, where a prediction report validates the projected revenue figure against actual assessment data before anything goes live. 

This is a meaningful shift from the status quo. In a spreadsheet environment, confidence in a model is largely built on experience and professional judgement. In EPM, it's built on verification. Prior year comparisons are also built into the platform, giving finance teams a clear view of how this year's model compares to last year's actuals an important check in any environment where significant anomalies need to be identified early. 

For finance leaders in any sector, the parallel is worth noting. How many planning cycles end with a model that 'looks right' rather than one that's been demonstrably validated? The gap between those two positions is where forecast errors live. 

The flexibility that makes EPM genuinely powerful

Rates modelling is a single application on a platform built for the full scope of financial planning. The same Infor EPM environment that powers the Rates Modelling Application also supports long-term financial planning, workforce and salary modelling, annual budgets, asset and infrastructure analysis each as a governed, purpose-built application drawing on shared data infrastructure. 

This is the architecture argument that finance leaders should pay attention to. A platform that can model a council's entire rating structure with real-time scenario comparison, data validation, and a full audit trail is not a specialised niche tool. It's a demonstration of what cloud based EPM can do when it's properly implemented for a complex, high-stake planning problem. 

The councils adopting this platform are not unique in facing planning challenges that have outgrown spreadsheets. They're simply among the first in their sector to do something about it. 

What this means for finance leaders

Every organisation has its equivalent of the rates model where the planning process is consequential, time-pressured, technically complex, and still running on tools that create as many problems as they solve. The spreadsheet that takes an hour to recalculate. The model that lives in one person's head. The forecast built on assumptions that nobody can easily interrogate. 

The councils using EPM for rates modelling have shown what's possible when the tool finally fits the problem: faster scenario exploration, confident forecasting, better governance, and decisions backed by evidence rather than intuition. That outcome isn't sector specific. It's available to any finance team willing to move past the spreadsheet. 

To learn more about Infor EPM and how AcQuum Consulting implements it for organisations across Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific, get in touch with the team directly. 

Get in touch to book a discovery session, to explore if this is a Infor EPM is a good fit for your organisation or visit our Infor EPM solution page to learn more.