1995-12-11 Regular Meeting - Laserfiche WebLink

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Financial and Administrative Data Processing System Executive Summary in 1988, the City received a report from the Accord Group, its computer system consultant. The report indicated that the City needed to upgrade its computer system in the next couple of years. The process of upgrading the system was complicated by the fact that the system not only ran financial software but also supported public safety. We made a decision to bring the public safety system up to date first and then follow with the replacement of the financial system. In September of 1994, the City requested "requests for proposals" (RFP) to provide a new Financial and Administrative Data Processing System. The preparation of a RFP for a project of this size is enormous. It took almost nine months to complete. It involved over 10 City employees in its preparation and review. We tried to keep it as concise and short as possible and still ended up with 170 pages. The RFP contained background information on our operation as well as 1,451 detailed questions on how their software handles specific transactions. There were three main items we wanted from the successful proposer. First, we wanted a system that had multiple installations that had been installed for several years. This is so we could check references and determine the actual working status of their system and answer questions concerning the installation and conversion to the new system. Second, we wanted a system that had a large presence in Texas. This was important to us because of the hardships we have encountered by our current system where they only had a handful of customers in Texas. A large Texas presence provides the City with a local network of users we can visit with to discuss characteristics of the system. With our current system, it was cost prohibitive to send many users to their training and user conference because it was always held in North Carolina. A large presence in Texas lends to the creation of local users group that can meet periodically to discuss issues. Thirdly, we wanted a system that we could install and use without any modification or customization. This was important to us again because of our current system. When the base software is modified, that modification had to be remembered and repeated in later upgrades. In our current system, we once tried to upgrade to a newer release of their software. It was disastrous because of the modifications that had been made to the system in the early 80's. Neither La Porte staff nor the software company knew what those modifications were. In a new system, we want one that meets our needs from the beginning. Ali of these items were covered in the RFP. We received six responses to our RFP. City staff reviewed the responses and checked references on all six respondents. This was a very detailed and extensive process. There were 9 employees involved in the reference checks and we had each one check the reference with their counterpart in other cities operating the respondents software. Each employee checked three references for each respondent. From this process, we obtained a minimum of 27 reference checks for each respondent.