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Item 4BApril 18, 2006 City of Southlake, Texas IT Alignment Study Presentation of Results Agenda Objectives Approach What We Found Recommendations Timeline Estimated Costs Benefits Question & Answer There Were 4 Key Project Objectives Align IT with the needs of the City Identify opportunities to improve management reporting either with existing, and/or new tools and systems Identify opportunities to improve process effectiveness and efficiency through the use of existing or new technology solutions Develop a high-level implementation roadmap that identifies the approach and timing to implement the required technology in order to improve City operations The Approach Was Comprehensive Implement Immediate Improvements Common Themes Implement Foundational Software Implement New Systems Expand Existing Systems Business Function Summaries Implementation Roadmap Future Application Architecture System Summaries Existing Application Footprint Business Cases Assessment Phase Deliverables Strategy & Plan Phase Deliverables Common Themes identified in the Assessment Phase led to a set of Business Case recommendations that were developed in the Strategy and Plan Phases and are supported by an Implementation Roadmap and a Future State Application Architecture Findings Were Grouped Into 4 Themes Missing system functionality results in manual or inefficient business processes Technology infrastructure is complicated and lacks critical integration between applications Current applications make reporting and analysis difficult or even impossible in some cases Current foundational applications are based on out of date technology and are hard to use What We Found Theme: Missing system functionality results in manual or inefficient business processes Example #1 Current Situation: The HR department currently uses an MS Access database and Excel spreadsheet to perform basic HR functions that would normally be supported/automated by a standard HR application Result: HR must manually track employee leave (FMLA/Workers Comp) and must manually calculate associated payroll calculations in Excel and load these values into the payroll system; this in turn requires reconciliation with payroll and is prone to human error Example #2 Current Situation: The current work order application is tailored for utility billing and cannot be used by other Public Works departments Result: A significant amount of daily work performed by the Public Works department is not tracked/managed in an application; this also has a significant impact on department reporting & planning What We Found Theme: Missing system functionality results in manual or inefficient business processes (continued) Example #3 Current Situation: The purchase order process is currently paper based and is not enabled online in the New World application Result: It sometimes takes days or weeks to process a purchase request because the paper purchase order must route through interoffice mail as part of the approval process. In addition, it is hard to determine the status of where a purchase order is in the process because Example #4 Current Situation: The New World application does not provide a facility for employees to enter their time online; they currently complete a timesheet created in MS Excel Result: The process to get an employee’s time into the New World application as part of the payroll process involves triple entry of the timesheet information (once onto paper document, once into Excel and once into New World) What We Found Theme: Technology infrastructure is complicated and lacks critical integration between applications Numerous Technology Platforms to Support: Operating Systems: AS/400, AIX, MS Server 2003, MS Windows XP, MS DOS Databases: IBM, Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase, Accuserver, PICS, Microsoft Access What We Found Theme: Current applications make reporting and analysis difficult Example #1 Current Situation: Activities/information stored in existing applications are saved in freeform text fields or the information is stored incorrectly because the application does not include the necessary data validation Result: Reports do not contain required information for valid reporting and require re-work in order to be meaningful Example #2 Current Situation: Key activities are not tracked because there is no supporting application (e.g., work orders, purchase orders, fleet maintenance, etc.) Result: In some cases, summary level information is saved in an Excel spreadsheet to enable very basic reporting or in some cases the City is not able to report on the information at all What We Found Theme: Current foundational applications are hard to use and run on a technology platform with weak future viability Technology With Weak Future Viability Finance & DPS applications run on the AS400/iSeries platform which has weak future viability as compared to other platforms AS400/iSeries comes with a higher total cost of ownership when compared to Microsoft apps AS400/iSeries requires a higher level of skill to support and skills are harder to come by Companies have started to “sunset” their support for the AS400/iSeries platform and are focusing efforts on Windows platforms Applications Are Not User Friendly User interface is based on “green screen” or “mainframe” paradigm Users must remember special key strokes and use function keys to navigate the many screens within the application Today’s users find these applications hard to use because they are accustomed to “windows” type applications The difficult user interface has been a barrier to the use of these applications Example “Green Screen” Application Recommendations We developed a future state application architecture to address the assessment themes Future State Application Architecture Foundation apps include automatic interfaces to support end to end processes Functions that were accomplished via MS Access are now part of foundation apps Additional functionality is available (reporting & analysis, self service, etc.) Foundational services such as GIS are integrated with foundational apps Future state architecture is simplified, using fewer operating system and db vendors The IT Roadmap Identifies Initiatives Required for Improvement Estimated Implementation Costs Note: 1) Costs would be incurred over a three year period from 2006 through 2008 2) Cost estimates are preliminary to be finalized as part of software selection & implementation planning The Benefits Are Significant Questions & Answers