City Saves Struggling ERP Project By hiring Experienced Project Manager

CLIENT OVERVIEW

• One One of the ten largest cities in Florida
• Encompasses nearly 36 square miles, with a population of about 170,065
• Provides services such as administration, public works, water and sewer utility, parks and recreation, planning, permitting, code enforcement, public safety, police and fire, and parking

CLIENT NEEDS

In March 2020, Panorama was engaged by the city to perform an assessment of the in-progress ERP implementation. The project had been stopped by the city in October 2019 amidst concerns about the operational readiness of the vendor’s software and the readiness of the city staff to successfully operate the new systems and corresponding processes.

The goal of this assessment was to determine if the software would meet the city’s needs, and if not, how they should proceed.

OUR APPROACH

Panorama spent several weeks employing the following approach:

• Project planning and document review
• Project team interviews and vendor Q&A
• Results analysis
• Assessment report

In addition, we evaluated the viability of the software solution relative to industry best practices and our experience with similar public sector clients.

OUR FINDINGS

Overall, we found that the city had invested a significant amount of effort and funds in the vendor software and related implementation activities.

We did find that good progress had been made with the requirements definition, process design, and data conversion. However, there remained significant configuration and testing to be completed in key areas of the system before the system could be considered ready for go-live.

Our assessment of the vendor functionality revealed gaps in the delivered software that would need to be remediated so the city could effectively use it. These remediation actions could be accomplished via system customizations, manual workarounds, or the use of third-party solutions.

OUR RECOMMENDATIONS

We presented the client with several options:

• Continue with the project and hire an external contract project manager with proven experience with the vendor software.
• Continue with the project but select another software vendor that is more suitable to support the business requirements.
• Discontinue with the project and continue to use the legacy systems in place.

THE OUTCOME

The city chose to contract a project manager with the necessary experience, and the project is being executed according to our recommendations.

Panorama Consulting Group is a technology-agnostic consultancy specializing in Digital Business Transformation and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) System Implementations for mid- to large-sized private- and public-sector organizations worldwide. This highly respected firm is 100% independent of software and technology vendor affiliation. They offer a phased and integrated approach to strategy alignment and execution, enabling each client to achieve its unique business transformation objectives by transforming its people, processes, and technology.

Panorama clients include multi-national conglomerates from Amazon Robotics to Valcor Engineering, as well as governmental entities, including state and local governments, municipalities, school districts, state offices of the attorney general, and tribal governments.

©Copyright - All Rights Reserved

DO NOT REPRODUCE WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION BY AUTHOR.