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The best software solution for managing infrastructure, capital improvement, and other projects in big cities needs to be one that accounts for complexity.
By the time a large city or county starts looking for strategic planning software, the planning itself is usually well established. These organizations typically already have strategic priorities approved by council or commissioners, department plans, capital plans, transportation plans, housing strategies, climate commitments, and performance measures tied to all of them. They have executive sponsorship, high public expectations, and regular reporting obligations.
What they are trying to solve is what happens after the plan is approved:
- How do dozens of departments report progress in a way leadership can actually use?
- How do leaders maintain visibility across hundreds of actions and projects?
- How do budget requests connect back to strategic priorities?
- How do elected officials get a clear answer when they ask what is on track, what is delayed, and where attention is needed most?
The 5 Things a Big City or County Will Need
Simply put, what a large city or county will need in their software solution, often, is something that helps them:
- Organize and align multiple plans.
- Integrate with their existing technology.
- Empower their staff with ease of use and implementation.
- Demonstrate accountability with their plans.
- Get what they want to get done, done.
“The system is very intuitive. We’ve got users across the organization who are incredibly tech-savvy as well as those who are not tech-savvy at all, and they’re all managing it.” – Brian Flanagan, Head of Learning & Organizational Development, Broward County, FL
The best software for big cities and counties is one that helps strategy stay connected to day-to-day operations, with reporting that works across departments, leadership teams, and the public.
That is why big cities and counties like the City of Philadelphia, Broward County, Hennepin County, Oakland County, Maricopa County Department of Public Health, and Central Arizona Project use Envisio.
When you serve more than one million residents, the software you choose needs to support long-term execution, multiple plans and projects, and consistent visibility across the organization.
1. Multiple Plans Supported At Once
Large local governments rarely run on a single plan. A county managing a five-year (or longer) strategic vision is almost certainly also managing departmental operational plans, capital improvement plans, public health strategies, transportation investments, housing commitments, and more. Keeping all of that connected is one of the harder operational challenges in local government, and this is where many reporting systems break down.
How envisio supports multiple plans
Envisio’s multi-plan management tools are built for exactly this; local governments can link plans together, align departmental strategies to department-wide goals, and run multi-plan reports that roll progress up across all of them.
Envisio’s architecture is built to natively support this type of multi-plan complexity and roll-up reporting, unlike other strategy and performance management tools built for the private sector.
The question leadership is usually trying to answer most often is not “What is each department individually doing?”, but rather, “how are we performing overall against the strategic priorities we’ve committed to?”
2. Integrations That Support Existing Systems
For large local governments, integrations matter almost as much as planning features.
Teams are already working in systems like Power BI, ArcGIS, Questica, Microsoft Teams, and ERP systems like Tyler MUNIS or Workday, and other existing financial and operational platforms. It’s important that a strategic planning software solution doesn’t ask a team to completely wipe out all of that existing infrastructure.
how envisio supports integration with existing systems
Envisio supports direct integrations, an Open API, and embedded visuals, allowing governments to centralize performance data while still using the tools departments already rely on.
It also allows teams to embed existing maps, charts, and other visuals rather than recreating them from scratch. This helps departments keep familiar workflows while leadership gets clearer visibility across the full organization.
3. Software with High Usability and Adoption
A government strategic planning software platform only works when departments actually use it.
A classic limitation of private sector software is that it is licensed based on the number of users. For large cities trying to complete complex cross-departmental complex projects, this causes siloed work and sometimes stalls strategic software implementations completely.
How Envisio supports large local governments with usability
Envisio provides unlimited users, role-based reporting, automated reminders, and implementation support designed for public sector teams of all sizes. Our customer success and coaching team is second to none, working directly with governments on:
- Creating cross-functional strategy teams
- Developing the right reporting cadence for different audiences.
- Building effective performance measures,
- Council presentations
- Long-term adoption and team capacity building—not just software onboarding.
This makes strategy easier to maintain over time, rather than creating another platform people avoid.
“Envisio worked to understand how we functioned and, knowing that I was completely open to change, guided us through best practices and, ultimately, a structure that works flawlessly and consistently meets our needs. We were able to implement the software virtually, with my team and most of city staff working remotely.”
– Aimee Kaslik, Chief Innovation and Performance Officer, City of Irving, TX
4. Public Dashboards Built for Transparency, Storytelling and Trust
Community dashboards are fully ADA-compliant and built for public-facing storytelling.
This is critical when reporting on complex and highly visible projects such as housing strategies, transportation projects, resilience planning and capital investments.
The ability to provide context for data within a dashboard—combining quantitative and qualitative information—and to give residents flexibility in terms of how they follow information from their local government, are critical pieces for building trust.
how envisio supports large local government storytelling with dashboards
Public transparency in the form of easy to use public dashboards are a great way for large local governments to tell their story. This is another major reason cities choose Envisio.
5. A System That Supports Long-Term Execution
The best software for big cities and counties ought to be one that helps strategy stay active after approval. That means better reporting habits, stronger visibility across departments, and a system that supports execution over the long term.
how envisio supports execution
Envisio’s entire philosophy is that what gets measured gets done, and that goals need to be achievable and resourced. You’ll find no shortage of resources—from our guides to our services for action planning and performance measurement—that will help you make sure you’re getting things done.
“We used the roll out of Envisio as an opportunity to take stock of the hundreds of measures we were tracking and streamline these into meaningful measures that track progress towards our departmental goals and strategic priorities.”
– MaryBeth VanTill, Strategy and Performance Management Manager, Kent County, MI
Philadelphia, PA: Managing Multiple Strategic Priorities Across Departments
The City of Philadelphia (population 1,526,000) is managing far more than a single strategic plan. Its Operations Transformation Fund is one example of how large cities use strategic planning software to coordinate work across departments.
The fund was created to support projects that improve how city services are delivered. It invested $10 million across two fiscal years and funded 29 initiatives focused on efficiency, equity, and service delivery.
Each initiative had its own implementation plan, ownership structure, and reporting requirements. Some were operational improvements. Others required coordination across multiple departments and longer-term public accountability.
That level of work cannot be managed through disconnected updates and occasional reporting cycles.
Philadelphia continues to use Envisio to track those projects collectively, giving leadership visibility across implementation rather than forcing every department to report in isolation. Progress across the portfolio remains visible, current, and measurable.
The same applies to Eastwick: From Recovery to Resilience, a climate resilience initiative in one of Philadelphia’s most flood-prone neighbourhoods. Flooding, environmental justice, infrastructure planning, and resident engagement all intersect there. No single department owns that challenge.
Philadelphia’s strength is not (just) that it plans ambitiously, because many cities do. Rather, it is that it builds implementation into the way the city governs.
Broward County, FL: Keeping a Five-Year Plan Alive
Broward County (population 2,013,317) had already completed one five-year strategic plan before building its 2023–2028 plan with Envisio. What they learned from the first plan was familiar: the strategy was strong, but monitoring and follow-up were inconsistent.
That is often where momentum disappears. Departments were working, but the structure around updates, accountability, and leadership visibility needed to be stronger.
Broward County approached the second plan differently.
They focused departments on their most strategic actions—the work with clear deliverables, timelines, and measurable outcomes. They strengthened monthly reporting, activated reminder notifications, added internal quality control, and created governance around how the plan would be maintained over time.
And (something we always love seeing) they’ve placed their strategic plan dashboard prominently on their city website, so residents can easily find it.
Envisio is Built for the Way Large Local Governments Actually Work
When a city or county is managing strategy across dozens of departments, the software decision is rarely about finding another reporting tool. It is about finding a system that can hold complexity without creating more administrative work.
Envisio is a fully integrated portfolio of tools, which means that every project, plan, and performance measure can be connected and rolled up for reporting and management purposes. Envisio is built specifically for the public sector, which means the structure reflects how local governments actually work—strategic plans, departmental plans, capital projects, performance measures, council reporting, and public dashboards all living in one place instead of across separate systems.
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Big cities and large local governments require platforms that can manage multiple plans at once, connect performance data from existing systems, support public reporting, and still work well for the people responsible for keeping everything updated.
Want to see what Envisio can do for you? Book a demo and we’ll show you the ropes!
