Civic Center officials, confident they are on the right track as the county gears up to launch a new fiscal management computer system next summer, offered a cheerful assessment of progress this week, saying the project is proceeding smoothly.
Although the county’s last effort to acquire and install an appropriate system crashed, costing the county $30 million, the civil grand jury said, officials said the new program appears to be on the right track.
“It’s going well,” said Supervisor Judy Arnold, who serves with colleague Kate Sears on a committee monitoring the project. “We’ve been struck by the careful planning.”
“The project is on time and on budget,” project manager Tim Flanagan said in a report to the county board. “The implementation team is approximately half way through the planned time for the finance phase of the project (and) still projecting an on-time delivery of the new system in July 2016,” he said. “In January 2016, the human resources and payroll phase of the project will kick off with a go-live date of July 2017.”
“Kudos for being on time and on budget,” Supervisor Sears said.
Design work with project consultant Tyler Technologies has cut expected costs $134,000, savings that will be set aside for future services, officials added.
The Board of Supervisors last year allocated $14 million to acquire, install and initially staff a new system, with expenses including $8.2 million for Tyler Technologies of Texas, the largest company in the nation focused solely on public sector software and services. Included in the $14 million expense is $5.9 million to cover county staffing for 36 months as well as a $1 million contingency.
Mindful of the county’s painful experience with its SAP system, a team of top officials negotiated a detailed, carefully-worded software systems contract as well as a requirements document that runs more than 500 pages. The program will replace core financial, budgeting, human resources and payroll components of the troubled SAP system that never worked as expected and cost too much to maintain.
“The software and services contract with Tyler Technologies applies multiple lessons learned from previous county experience and is designed to provide detailed level project control and shared incentives for project success,” according to a 2014 memo signed by County Administrator Matthew Hymel and department heads in charge of finance, human resources, information technology and public works.
In that light, the contract with Tyler involves a “not to exceed” price, staffing guarantees to assure “consistent and quality” staff expertise from the vendor, a payment schedule tied to performance milestones and the sharing of any savings if the project comes in under budget.
Annual ongoing maintenance and support fees will begin at $387,000 with incremental increases for 10 years, and ongoing county staff costs will be roughly $750,000 less a year than the SAP system, according to the county administration.
The county decided to junk the SAP system in 2010, just four years after installing it, after officials concluded it was more economical to start over than fix and maintain a program that did not work as expected.
The county filed dual lawsuits, claiming fraud and racketeering among a host of felonies, but lost even more money when its legal battle went belly up at the courthouse. The county board, which spent $5 million on legal consultants, accepted a $3.9 million settlement with no public explanation. A gag order approved behind closed doors by county supervisors gave political, legal and liability cover to all parties.
