Title
New City Financial System
Memorandum
In 2002, the City installed a comprehensive Financial Management, Human Resources and Payroll system called AMS Advantage, by American Management Systems. The AMS Advantage system included modules for Finance, Accounting, Budget, Human Resources, Payroll and Management Reporting. The AMS Advantage system went through its last major upgrade in 2005 and, largely due to technology complexity and upgrade costs, has not been kept up to date from an end-user functional and technology standpoint. In 2007, the AMS Human Resource and Payroll functions were replaced with Ultimate Software’s Ultipro Human Resources and Payroll system. The financial aspects of the AMS system, including Finance, Accounting, Budget and Management Reporting, remain in use today.
At the May 4th City Council meeting, a contract with The Azimuth Group, Inc. was approved for a financial system needs assessment, the output from which would help the City determine whether or not to upgrade or seek a replacement for the AMS Advantage Financial system. Over the last several months, the Accounting and Information Technology Service Units, along with the Azimuth Group have interviewed various City staff involved with the City’s financial processes. They gathered and organized the financial system needs, developed a cost-benefit analysis for system upgrading or replacement, developed a gap analysis of current needs versus current functionality, and developed a Request for Proposal for a new financial system.
In August, the City received six responses to the Financial System RFP#749, and through the course of RFP review and a full day due diligence process for each vendor, the evaluation committee eliminated four of the six vendors. The two finalists were brought back to City Hall for separate two-day demonstrations, where each vendor was subjected to the same “script”. A team of over 100 city staff were invited to participate. At the end of the process...
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