Travis County Commissioners Court

June 26, 2012 - Item 3
Agenda

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Item number 3, receive update on the Better Enterprise Financial Information for Travis County (BEFIT (systems, applications and products in data processing, SAP program) phase 1 conversion on June 4 and recognize implementation team.
And ms. Petaro.

>> Thank you, judge.
As everyone knows, we are bringing up the major financial system we started quite some time ago doing needs analysis and banging it out and we have met a major --

>> Need a little more volume on that.
Media, can we get more volume on mic no.
6?

>> Is that okay?
Thanks.
Judge.

>> Okay.

>> So we have reached, on June 4 a major milestone and that is what we have gone up live on phase 1 and let me tell you what's in the modules that we brought up so you know that, and I want to recognize the people that have worked on it and kind of give you an update where we are.
Phase 1 included the finance module -- or finance group general ledger, grants manage.
We've never had a grants management program before, accounts payable, accounts receivable asset management projects, never had projects before.
Travel and cash receipts.
So that's the financial model.
We also brought up the procurement module which has to do with goods received.
The generation of requests, of rek sigs, pos and contracts, and we are working on the supplier self-service getting vendors to register into the system.
We have brought up some work flows that will come from the payroll system into this system in terms of authorizing where people are in the organization and what they have access to.
Obviously the software package that we bought is sap.
It is one of the largest, if not the largest, financial erp system in the world, and so Travis County is now on a system that many, many prestigious governments and businesses use.
The implementer that we chose, that you chose, is labyrinth solutions, inc.
And we call them lsi.
And next to me are two partners from lsi and they've certainly partnered with us on this very difficult project.
And we'll have them say a few things here in a moment.
But one of the impressive things is that five out of seven partners at lsi have worked actively on this project.
Their people, some are staying in Austin and are kind of our guests and have grown to love Austin and some of the things Austin has.
Others are coming in for a while and leaving and coming back, so it's a very mobile group.
Some of them are working off-site.
But they have made a significant investment along with the investment of our staff in terms of bringing the system up.
It is up.
It is running.
It is processing transactions.
That's good news.
As of today we've processed -- I'm going to round these numbers, our people like precise numbers but I'll round them off, 1500 shopping carts, 740 purchase order have gone through the system.
1600 goods receipts, 854 cash journal postings, 120 budget adjustments.
We have processed 3900 invoices, 1600 payments, 661 trips and mileage requests.
We have 394 vendor that have registered for the vendor self-service.
And in terms of training, and this is particularly impressive and speaks to the quality of people in this county, we have -- we have trained 2,050 employees either on-line or in classes or both, 416 actually attended training, and we had 82 classroom classes.
This is a monumental system.
It is very, very different than what we had in the past.
It's not just an accounting system.
It's a business process system.
Technically it is complicated.
It has been a very, very difficult transaction -- transition to this program, but I think we're going to see that we are going to get a lot of benefit of this.
When we were getting excited to bring up phase 1, which is what we've brought up, we were talking to some technical people and they said, oh, sure, you're happy now, but there will be the trough of disillusionment as we bring it up.
I thought, oh, no, I can't face that.
But the truth is now what we're doing is learning it.
Some of it is really, really different.
Some of it is new.
People have been very patient in the county in terms of learning it.
We are starting to see some really aha moments, like I know what I'm doing now and this is working out well.
It's going to be neat.
We are perfectionists but no system is perfect so there are some bugs we'll be working out.
It will probably take nine months to a year to really totally stabilize the system where the county as a whole is comfortable in running it, using it and supporting the technology.
You know, one of the phrases that I was thinking when I thought about this project and what I would say is, you know, there's that saying, it takes a village to raise a child.
And I think one thing we can say is it takes a county to implement in the rp system, and it is a countywide effort.
So I would like to recognize the people that have done this.
First I'm going to let the gentleman on my right, who are from lsi, and right next to me is lee nelson and he's going to -- I'm going to introduce the Travis County people and he will introduce the lsi people, and on his -- on his right is mark -- and he told me how to say his name, I'm mess it up, shetschneider.
So -- and he's a partner with lsi.
So gentlemen, if you want to make a few comments and then we'll start introducing and thanking people.

>> Thank you, susan.
Yeah, I would like to say, what the county has undertaken here and succeeded at is it really should be noticed that -- I've been around this 20 years, and the scope, the amount of work and effort that went into this has been phenomenal.
And both from my team and I'm proud of our folks but what the county personnel has put into this and really achieved is outstanding.
And yeah, you climb a path and you get excited, you go live and there is a trough of learning, and that's really all it is.
But I think you've set yourselves up for 20-plus years and really it's just a growing, evolving product.
You're on the right platform, latest technology.
So you should be very proud of your employees out there.
They've done a wonderful job and we're proud to be a part of it.
Very excited.

>> Okay.
Going down the table, just to introduce people and thank them is in the blue shirt, of course, you know is mike woodburn and he's been the project director for this baby out of the auditor's office and mike runs three divisions in the auditor's office so this has been a staggering accomplishment on pop of the workload that he already has.
He's done a really nice job on that.
Next to him is christina dare who's been the project manager.
She's focusing on systems -- they look totally completely worn out, if they do, they are.

>> [laughter] we have asked more than we should of employees and they've given more than we've asked.
I have to say that they're beyond exhaustion at this point.
But I think we're going to see a product that is worth that.
Before we get into the actual teams, I want to thank barbara wilson from the assistant -- an assistant county attorney.
We had some contract modifications which she worked on, lori clive from the purchasing office worked on that.
One thing with a project like this, you just got to keep it moving, and so they were right on it and they helped.
They did what had to be done and we did not lose momentum.
And so I thank lore barbara and lori collide from the purchasing office to do that.
Steering committee was comprised of Sam Biscoe and joe harlow, the chief information for Travis County.
Cyd grimes, the purchasing officer, leroy nellis from the planning and budgeting officer and now of course leslie browder who is the planning and budget executive manager, dolores ortega carter the treasurer, and diane furrow, the hr direct are.
It's been the steering committee.
Let me start going down the list here.
I'll introduce our people and then lee will introduce the counterparts in lsi.
The first group that worked was the finance group and the lead on that was robin wright.
Come on up, finance group.
They're shy, but they -- I know it's hard to believe.
Robin wright is the lead from the auditor's office, chris brewsard, kelly from the auditor's office, and she's the subject matter expert on consolidations and financial reporting.
Mary reyna from the auditor's office.
Where is mary, right there.
And she is the specialist in accounts payable subject matter expert.
Nisha sharma and she is grants auditing from the auditor's office.
Sean o'neil, disbursements auditing from the auditor's office and tracy leblanc, disbursements auditing from the auditor's office.
So thank you very much and lee will introduce the finance counterparts from lsi.

>> [applause]

>> Man many of these folks have rolled off the project but I want to recognize those who invested their time.
On the finance team we have brenda williams who is our team lead.

>> Come on up, shy people.

>> [laughter]

>> Christie stein, kathy bone tregger, bill venger, been track, sham, and patrick winn.
Those are the ones here today.

>> Brenda was the chief finance person.

>> Which is a good sign when your consultants are gone.

>> [laughter]

>> Great, thank you.
On the procurement side we've got donna scarborough from the auditor of's office.
Paula columbia from the auditor's office, rose garcia from purchasing and scott worthington from purchasing.
Every time it seems I walked in that building on a weekend I saw scott.

>> [laughter] was it necessary to say that?

>> [laughter]

>> On the other side, we had moleculey ramah swamy and serabida spea darmen and moo is the only one here today.

>> [applause]

>> The group in the hr organizational structure, what we needed to do in order to give people access and figure out what they needed to do, there needed to be an organizational structure set up, and these people will be working on the payroll hr system but worked on this.
Andrea ross, who is the lead on that from the auditor's office.
Regen a dorval from hrmd and the hrmd compensation team, so all of them worked on this kind of interface to set that structure up.

>> And on our side we had niewrt langdon.

>> [applause]

>> , you know, one of the things with this new system is all rewards are -- words are different, titles are different.
Now we're talking about business intelligence and development so this is the development and reporting group.
From the auditor's office, matt jizooski.
I could mess his name up, masicon, is he here?
Our guy is here.
Come on up, shy people.
Larry coe, the auditor of office, mary laredo and jimmy pace from the auditor's office.
They worked in development reporting and business intelligence and what business intelligence really is is working with the system to make business solutions and getting in there and developing them.
And so for us to really maximize our system and work on it all the time if you're -- looking ahead and helping get ideas and figure out how the system is going to do it.
So this is a cool deal.

>> Okay.
For those whose names I butcher, I apologize in advance.
On our reporting and development team we had per cash, john phillips, rick fer low, steve mcleod, jaga dish, lincoln, hanish lumbar and suresh raju.

>> Thank you.

>> [applause]

>> The technical team for Travis County, the lead was david stanton from its, so technical persons come on up.
Here's david.
Eduardo gonzales from the auditor's office.
Chris ekert, its, auditor I have o, victoria hagadoor, auditor's office, and chris flanagan auditor's office, and chris and daniel -- chris and daniel were going everywhere setting up the training system and making everyone work in three different buildings and they're the ones that are engineers all around.
We just added daniel, actually, a couple months ago.
The other thing is that there are large groups, and joe, you could help me out with this if you wanted, you and walter.
Its obviously worked on every single part of this, and there are probably 35 to 40 people that need to be mentioned, and I'm going to just talk about the groups we know walter lagrown and joe harlow.
They have been just wonderful partners in this.
The way this system is primarily working is that the database and the accounting -- the application software, the auditor's office runs and we partner with its and they run all the applications.
And so we work with them.
It has been a tremendous effort on their part to get everything up working, and helping everyone out.
And I'm going to just list these divisions, joe, and correct me if I've got them messed up.
The operations group, which is the server rooms, networks and telecom, that group, system server, that group, the development people that worked on the hhs interface, project and web on the befit web site, the workstations and software packaging group, and the help desk.
So there's a lot of people from its that were joining in and working.
One of the things with these projects is there's a lot of people in the background.
You know, you see a few at the front but it takes a lot of people that don't get a lot of glory that are working all the time to keep things up and it has done a really nice job working with everyone else on this team.

>> And then on our technical side we had mike shaneous, pat shafer, solomon tepita and kear and I knight.
Mike -- keira knight, mike is our sole representative here.
Thank you.

>> [applause]

>> The last actual core group of people is operational change management, and, you know, when we were looking at the system we talked to a lot of people.
We did an rfi, as you know, and talked about what kind of things led to success and what didn't.
And george scott, who most of you know who used to be a partner in our audit group when we used deloitte said, susan, concentrate on organizational change management because what you will find that if you don't, that will be the failure of your system.
We took that very seriously when we went out.
We looked for lsi to bring in an operational -- organizational change management group, which they did, and donna scarborough was our lead on that in-house and has done a fantastic job.
It has been working with the offices, communicating with them, and also working with the training.
So let me introduce donna was the lead on that.
Karen sunlightner, from the auditor's office, john rad from hrmd, ruina chrisy from the auditor's office, and then I invited them but they couldn't stay long enough.
We had 77 readiness coordinators throughout the county who are responsible for communicating, bringing back issues, coordinating.
They did a fantastic job and worked with the system and it's one of the reasons that I think they feel fairly comfortable, is because of the readiness coordinators.
The other thing we had is not only did we have on-line training but we had train the trainers, and so some of our local people here in this room did training.
Sidney a cross by from it.
Nr was a trainer.
Donna williams, they were here, I don't know if they still are, was a trainer.
For pbo jeremy broadhorn, did I mess his name up?
I had, sorry, aaron tusont from pbo, nicki reilly from the auditor's office and has not a york.
So these people not only -- hannah york, these people not only learned the new system but learned it well enough to train other people and did just a fantastic job.
I didn't hear anything but positive comments on these people.
So they did a really, really nice job.

>> Our change management lead was dan seaman.
Training lead was andy mcenreason and yvette duncan and like always -- like always dan is our sole representative here.

>> They worked together and did a great job.
Behind all of this there are a few other people that need to be thanked.

>> [applause] , you know, roger alcurry and his staff, they needed rooms to train, to get ready, we needed two rooms in 700.
His people were there.
They got it ready, they got it furnished and we were up and running, and so they were there.
We had a few problems with the air-conditioning and roger's people are there fixing it.
So they were behind the scenes as well.
I want to thank the folks out at cyrus one, which is the colocation for the data center.
We really need you to get out there fast and we did, and that worked out exceptionally well in terms of getting our servers and that out there.
One of the things I want to do also is really thank the court for your commitment to this project and confidence in it.
It's a big expenditure.
It's a big project, and we couldn't have done it without the support of you all in helping our people.
As I said, I think our people have worked as hard as people can possibly work on this.
But this is phase 1.
There is a phase 2, and that has to do with payroll, hrmd and risk management, and we're going to be looking at that.
One of the hitches in the get-along here as you know for phase 1, we extended it for two months, and when we originally scheduled, they weren't touching and now we have a two-month overlap and many of those people had to work on both systems. I want to thank the people who are in the offices working.
In our office my first assistant of course diana warner, who basically keeps everyone in line and in order and on task.
Jose flas I don't say, who is the division -- palacios for imursment auditing, nicki reilly for consolidationses and grants.
Deedee bell who is the manager for grants, and April bacon who is our lawyer and was constantly looking at things like do we need to change this.
Is it landlord?
-- is it legal?
There are many more people who worked on this, but these people, they already have a full-time job and they get to do either this job in the day and their full-time job at night or their full-time job at day and this at night.
So I want to thank you for funding it and recognize the people who have really done more than anyone should probably ask people to do.
So thank you.

>> Thank you.

>> [applause]

>> And forgive me, I just need to recognize one more person.
Our project manager, rick miller.

>> [laughter] unfortunately rick couldn't be here today.
He had surgery yesterday here in Austin, but he's back at his apartment recovering, but I do want to mention him and thank him for keeping us together and moving forward.
Thank you.

>> [applause]

>> Well, I feel like I need to say thanks to all of us for all of the time and commitment you gave to this project.
It was not a surprise to me.
We had talked about this about three years -- a good three years before this actually became a reality and all along that time I think you explained why the need to transition to the new system, and certainly at the very top of the list is the accountability to the public for their tax money that we handle.
A lot of departments handle revenue, and so we wanted to make absolutely sure that there was never any problem whatsoever.
I mean, this was my view on it.
I wanted to make sure that the public knew that we were doing everything possible, humanly possible, to make sure that we didn't have any, any issues at all with the way their money was handled.
And then I think the proposal that you put together was certainly one that -- I don't know that any other proposal has surpassed in terms of planning for it, in terms of carrying it out, involving all of the county departments, and I think most of us have something to do with revenue.
And -- and then I think the communication that you certainly had in place to make sure that all of the county departments had participated at the front end when we came to deciding what needed to be included in that proposal.
And then I think the proposers, you know, did a wonderful -- wonderful partners.
I remember the times that we had to go over to see the presentations as to -- so we could compare, and know what it was that we were getting into.
So -- but to the -- even the training was great.
I went to one of those trainings, and I'll tell you, financial -- financial background is not my forte, but however, it was -- chris did a great job of making sure that I understood and followed each step.
So that was -- that was good, and it makes me -- made me feel good that our employees would also be able to follow all of those steps and make sure that we got the system running.
And so -- so I just feel very good about this project and the fact that we're going to be able to be more accountable to taxpayers.
And so -- but many thanks.
It couldn't have happened with all of you, without all of the participation and cooperation, commitment, collaboration, teamwork, that all of you all carried out in order to get this done.
I can't say -- I can't say enough about you.
Thank you so much.

>> Thank you.

>> [applause]

>> I just want to say thank you to everybody, again, on my behalf for what you have done, but I also want to point out that susan read a long list of names and I just think that we really should thank susan.
This -- this project is no small white knuckle trip.
When you're looking at the kind of revenues and expenses and financial management that the county has, and I think the leadership and the good management skills that you demonstrated are what -- what we should be proud of at the county and I certainly am, and I thank you.

>> [applause]

>> Great job.
We appreciate each and every one of you.
Take the next hour off as a bonus.

>> [laughter] thank you for your patience, too.
Is the fire marshal nearby?
Let's take this one item because I think the fire marshal will recommend a burn ban in unincorporated areas.
Did the fire marshal leave?

>>

>> [inaudible].

>> All right.
If the fire marshal left we'll take that item up this afternoon.

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