Computer system request for proposals ready by early ’15

Benicia is about 90 percent done in assessing its current needs before composing a request for proposals for new financial software programming that will affect every city department, Finance Director Karin Schnaider told the Finance Committee on Friday.

The proposals request should be ready to be issued sometime between January and March 2015, she said.

Schnaider said she went through a similar process when she worked in Sierra Madre, and said the current schedule for putting the new system in place is based on that experience.

Greg Henry, management analyst, will manage the project, working with both Schnaider and Assistant City Manager Anne Cardwell, the finance director told the panel.

“We’re going to look at the project as a whole,” she said. Even though the approach will be divided into phases — modules and blocks, as Schnaider described them — city employees no longer will handle the situation piecemeal.

The scope of work has changed dramatically since 2011, when the city first agreed that its longtime computer vendor, SunGard, would provide a $60,000 software upgrade called ONESolution, because the company was focusing on that system for its municipal clients, instead of Bi-Tech, which the city’s Finance Department currently uses.

Through the years, the city’s series of finance directors addressed budgetary upheavals, staffing cutbacks and other fiscal emergencies.

Meanwhile, the attempts to upgrade the city’s computers to ONESolution became so problematic that city staff began saying “ONESolution is not the solution.” Representatives of the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) were brought in to examine the situation and make recommendations.

Finally, at the Finance Committee’s Jan. 24 meeting, City Manager Brad Kilger and interim Finance Director Brenda Olwin said the new price to get ONESolution installed and working would be between $300,000 and $500,000, because an entire system overhaul, not just an upgrade, would be required.

That prompted a change in direction in which Benicia would seek bidders for the process. In the interim, with GFOA guidance and under Olwin’s supervision, the city modified its current financial computer programming so it would work more efficiently.

The city isn’t financially at risk despite the computer system deficiencies, the city manager said Friday.

But Kilger also observed that the city would have put the project out for bids in 2011, “if we knew then what we know now.”

Schnaider said in her experience, some departments’ employees had become attached to their old computer methods, but as they discovered how well improved software systems worked, they not only adapted but became supportive.

She said Benicia’s conversion would be similar to Sierra Madre’s, in that the change won’t just affect the Finance Department. It will change how each department deals with its finances, and should improve interdepartmental computer communication to reduce unnecessary duplication.

“Right now we have two accounting softwares, and they don’t talk to each other,” she said.

“I can’t explain how complicated it is,” she said, but she provided the committee with some insight. “Each line of each MOU (memorandum of understanding) with city employees’ labor representatives has its own pay code,” she said.

The procedure will be a step-by-step process that builds and depends on the previous module, Schnaider said. Along the way will be “testing, testing, testing.”

Cardwell promised the committee that employees from other departments will remain involved in the transition.

She said the current “department culture” is “doing their own thing.” That approach also will change under Henry’s guidance, she said, so that departments will see “it’s not a finance thing, it’s a Benicia thing.”

Kilger said the change eventually would lead to seamless operations with departments supporting each other. “We’re starting to get people on board,” he said.

The cost is expected to range from $500,000 to $1 million, and the city will have to prepare for that expenditure, Cardwell and Kilger said. As staff members prepare the city’s “shopping list” that will be formalized in the request for proposals, they must be mindful about prices so the city can get the most of what it needs, both said.

Schnaider said the request document in Sierra Madre was about 300 pages long, the size of a book. By the time a vendor responds, the city gets a book back, she said.

But once the system is in place, the city should see operational cost savings in the long run as staff begins to work more efficiently, she said, adding that she is looking to assure that whatever system wins the bid is one that would last the city 10 to 15 years.

Committee member Chris Carvalho said he didn’t favor dragging out the process, but his own experience with such projects in the private sector has shown him, “if you don’t do it right, you end up with a mess.”

Chairperson Michael Clarke said if the city can meet its March 2015 deadline to seek bids, “it’ll make my day.”

“This is not on the back burner,” Cardwell told the committee. “We’re going to make tracks.”