Contractor approval puts Benicia closer to long-awaited upgrade of citywide system

Benicia city departments are one step closer to having modern financial software that is expected to streamline certain operations, saving money to some extent — but, more importantly, freeing employees to undertake additional projects.

City Council agreed unanimously Tuesday to authorize a contract with Tyler Technologies for Munis municipal financial enterprise resource planning (ERP) software.

The move represents a shift in the city’s approach to the situation that initially began in 2010 under former Finance Director Rob Sousa, who had hoped the city’s long-time computer vendor would be able provide city finance and human resources computers with an upgrade that would allow the two departments to work collaboratively.

The fiscal roller coaster caused by the recession meant Sousa and successive interim and full-time finance directors were focused on handling revenue shortfalls and other financial shocks.

But as the economy began to stabilize, city employees began realizing the upgrade, to a system called OneSolution, wasn’t working.

A deeper analysis of the situation showed that the upgrade was incompatible with Benicia’s computers and their current software. Instead of a $66,000 product, employees learned, the vendor, SunGard, finally said that to make OneSolution work the computers’ programming would need a six-figure overhaul.

Early in 2014, City Manager Brad Kilger and then-interim Finance Director Brenda Olwin said the city should drop OneSolution and open the project up to competitive bids.

Finance Director Karin Schnaider told the Council on Tuesday that she has worked with Tyler Technologies before, and has a high opinion of the company.

She also told the Council she is looking forward to the day her department employees no longer need to deal with three separate computer programs to complete a single financial transaction at its business counter.

Schnaider said the city could experience some savings once the new software is in place. But where the municipality will see real savings is in staff time, she said.

The Council may not have to wait as long before information it requests is available, she said, and employees would be free from cumbersome computer programs that depend heavily on hand-entered data and counting heavily, if not exclusively, on Schnaider’s department.

“I won’t be doing less,” she said. “I’ll be doing more.”

Munis is expected to work citywide, letting departments handle some fiscal information without waiting on the Finance Department, Schnaider said.

The change comes at a cost. The Council earmarked $800,000 for the project.

The Munis software lease and maintenance contract costs about $173,000 annually, less than the $182,000 Benicia pays annually for its current three contracts. But costs could change if the city and the contractor either remove or enhance program modules.

In eight years, Benicia will have spent $1.4 million on the contract, but it will get what Schnaider calls a hosted environment. Because Tyler leases the software to Benicia, the company will be responsible for its maintenance, as well as servers, storage, retrieval of data and the updates required to keep Benicia in compliance with laws regulating financial reporting.

Some of the money earmarked for the project also will go toward onsite training, project management and conversion, documentation, internal control auditing and testing, and $150,000 would be spent on additional equipment.

City employees will get to see a demonstration July 16, and work on the project would start Aug. 1.

Schnaider said after the Council vote that the next six months will be intense for her and the department.

The conversion of core financial areas will be undertaken first, and should be complete by Oct. 1. Payroll and human resources should be converted by Dec. 1.

Then the vendor can focus on utility billing, which should be ready next spring. The project is expected to be completed by summer 2016.