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2 <br /> <br />o Custom Saved Reports – Custom reports are intuitive to create, savable, and accessible <br />from a staff member’s dashboard. <br />• Customer Service – we expect to see an improvement over the current software’s response time <br />and ability to address needs. <br />• Local user groups – user groups are a great way for staff to learn from peers how to use the <br />software. <br /> <br />Improvements in the above items should improve efficiency, and therefore resiliency and capacity, in the <br />Finance Department and organization wide. <br /> <br />Staff had brought this planned purchase to the attention of Council earlier this year in preliminary budget <br />and CIP discussions, and again in the adoption of the final CIP in December. The city’s purchasing <br />policy (excerpt below) and state statute require that items with a cost of up to $175,000 should be <br />obtained through either sealed bids, cooperative purchasing or direct negotiation with a minimum of 2 <br />quotes. <br /> Finance staff opted for direct negotiation to both streamline and provide flexibility in the process. Our <br />process was as follows: <br />• Research which companies are used by mid-size cities in Minnesota. <br />o BS&A, Caselle, JD Edwards, and Tyler were known to us and mentioned the most by <br />other cities. Springbrook, our current software, is also used by a few other cities in our <br />area. <br />• Initial research of companies and which might be the best fit. <br />• Obtain preliminary quotes from those companies. <br />• Finance Director and Finance Coordinator attended preliminary product demonstrations w/ <br />BS&A, Caselle and Tyler. <br />• Full-day product demonstrations were conducted on-site for top two companies – Tyler and <br />BS&A - w/ all Directors and Finance Staff invited to each. <br />• Final/revised quotations were obtained based on further information obtained in those meetings. <br /> <br />After the full product demonstrations were complete, Finance staff has determined that BS&A would be <br />the best product to meet our needs and make the desired improvements. It outperformed the other <br />company in almost all the above processes we are looking to improve. In addition, it was the one that <br />came with the most recommendations and fewest concerns from other cities, as well as Metro-INET staff, <br />who recently assisted with a Springbrook-to-BS&A conversion with the City of Roseville. Further, <br />BS&A provides direct integration with Laserfiche, so if we decide to switch software in the future, our <br />documents are already saved in our permanent electronic document repository. <br /> <br />Full cost comparisons and quotes for the top 3 companies are attached and summarized here. <br /> <br /> Setup / Implement / Training Annual Fees <br />BS&A (recommended) 123,603 44,855 <br />Caselle 139,600 29,615 <br />Tyler 110,210 53,423 <br />Springbrook & Banyon (current) n/a 15,445 <br />While BS&A is approximately $13,000 more than Tyler for initial implementation, annual fees are <br />$8,500 less. And while Caselle has lower annual fees, that software did not make it into our top 2 <br />preferred due to a lack of functionality.