City of Stamford Internal Newsletter

City of Stamford

ERP Project

To our City of Stamford employees,

The City of Stamford is currently undergoing many exciting changes that you may have heard about. This newsletter will aim to keep City employees up to date on new innovative projects and how they may impact your day-to-day operations. Two of these changes, which will be focused on in this newsletter, will include a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System and the creation of a new Chief Information Officer (CIO) position. Future monthly updates will keep employees informed of project activities and progress and will include any changes that will be implemented with the new ERP system.

ERP

Project Vision

The vision behind the ERP project is to implement a system and integrate current Siloed systems,

enabling the City to continue to modernize its business processes. Through this advanced method for efficient sharing of data, all departments will subsequently be able to enhance their business model.

Selected vendors

The City began the search for an ERP system through a Request for Qualifications process wherein 8 vendors responded. Of those, four were requested to respond to a Request for Proposals within which we identified 998 pieces of functionality that we wanted in the system for Stamford. Three of the four respondents were selected to make a full demonstration of their systems.

The vendor selected unanimously by the Evaluation Committee, Steering Committee, Governance

Committee and the Mayor for the main ERP was Oracle. This selection was based on their financial

system, licensing and permitting, business inelegance and reporting. They recommended a software that they integrate with called Can AM for cashiering, and we have yet to determine the vendor for fleet and fuel management.

At this time, the City is going through contract review and negotiations with the selected vendors and targeting the October 4th Board of Representatives meeting for contract approval. The implementation team will initiate the project immediately following Board approval.

Business Functionality

The ERP includes the following modules:

General Ledger, Budget Control Budgeting (capital & operating) Purchasing

Accounts Payable Accounts Receivable Cash Receipts

Cash; Bank Management Grants Management Project Management

Fixed Assets Licensing & Permitting Cashiering

Business Intelligence, Reporting Vehicle Maintenance Fuel management

The City will be replacing the H.T.E. financial system, View Point Cloud (VPC) / OpenGov Licensing & Permitting, the current Cashiering system, Fleet Commander, the current Fuel Master system, and COGNOS.

High Level Implementation Schedule

The schedule for the implementation of the modules listed above is:

Phase 1 October 2021 – July 2022 Phase 2 August 2022 – July 2023

Core Financials*, Fleet Management,

Fuel Management, and Business

Intelligence Reporting

Remaining Financial Modules, Licensing, Permitting, and Cashiering

This schedule may change as we move into the design phase, but the goal is to focus on

replacing H.T.E first and then add additional modules in the second phase.

The team required for this implementation includes:

ERP Project Manager – Consultant from ISG, an international company headquartered in Stamford;

Governance Committee – Membership from the Board of Education, the Board of Finance, the Board of Representatives and advisors from outside of the City with experience in ERP implementations.

Steering Committee – Membership of leaders from a broad cross section of City departments.

Business Team Leads – Membership of City staff knowledgeable in the various business areas that will be addressed in the new ERP system;

Subject Matter Experts –

Membership from a broad cross section of City departments recruited to ensure the changes implemented with the new system will work for the departments.

Conversion and Integration Data Cleansing

To accomplish the successful implementation of the new system, there will be data conversions for the systems that are being replaced and integration processes with the systems that remain. A key factor in conversion and integration is the data that will be recorded in the new system.

Conversion and integration verification is necessary to confirm that the appropriate data is being

transitioned into the new system. The more data we convert or integrate, the more difficult it is to verify the data. As a result, now is a good time to start cleansing the data in your systems to ensure that reliable data is converted or interfaced.

Data cleansing may initially sound difficult, but it is actually not complex to cleanse the data once you have decided on your cleansing criteria. Cleansing criteria refers to the rules you will use to determine if a record should be converted or interfaced. Adhering to guidelines and regulations will better enable you to decide what data is necessary to clean out of your current systems.

For example: the vendor file is a common data cleansing activity in an implementation project. Data cleansing rules are typically focused on duplicate vendors and vendors with no activity for a specified length of time. Common vendor file cleansing criteria include:

1. Duplicate vendor records for the same vendor. Duplicates should be excluded from the

conversion.

2. Procurement or accounts payable activity within the last 2 years. Vendors with no

activity for the past 2 years should be excluded from the conversion.

Using the cleansing criteria depicted above, only one vendor record per vendor and only

vendors that have conducted business over the past 2 years will be converted.

This cleansing criteria reduces the number of records to be converted as well as the amount of

data that must be verified. This process enables thousands of records to be excluded from a

conversion that would have otherwise required verification.

As noted above, now is a good time to start cleansing the data in any of the systems that will be

converted or integrated. However, it is important to remember to conserve any data that the

City is required by law to maintain.

Board of Education

While it may appear that this change in ERP is mainly prevalent to those in data-focused positions, it is important to realize that all City employees will be directly impacted, including members of the Board of Education. Oracle, pending board approval, will automate business processes and extend to all budgetary functions including accounting operations, procurement (SRM) to maximize cost savings, and payment methods. Review of these processes may be discussed with members of the aforementioned Project Team to gain better understanding.

Chief Information Officer (CIO)

Throughout the process of selecting the ERP system, the City became aware that a CIO is needed to ensure that the City continues to improve functionality processes after the implementation is

completed, define and monitor a consistent data model across all City systems, develop and manage a consistent technology acquisition process that includes integration with other related systems, and to manage the City’s response to cybersecurity threats.

The City has the approval of the Board of Representatives for the addition of the CIO position. The

position was first listed in June and the City received 70 resumes of well-qualified applicants. The

resume review and interview processes have been ongoing and a candidate(s) will be recommended to the Mayor in late August.

Information Technology Project Manager

The City has also received approval for an Information Technology Project Manager position. The

operational areas of concern focused on by this position are those departments that have systems that cannot be integrated with the new ERP system, but whose data should be. Decisions will need to be made regarding replacing siloed systems and how the replacement systems should integrate with the new ERP system. The position will also address cybersecurity protocol with the systems that are being integrated and will support the operational capacities that are within the strategic plan of the CIO.