Agenda Packets - 1996/04/22 - Laserfiche WebLink

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MEMORANDUM To: City Council From: Interim Finance Coordinator • Re: Computerized financial package The Finance Department has been in need of a new computer system for sometime. e present system was upgraded in March of 1989. During the last couple of years it has been processing data very slowly. Even though this computer's memory board was replaced this year the system is being pushed to its limit. Financial software packages for municipalities have improved and hardware has become much faster in the last decade. The staff has spoken with many Cities in order to discover the best hardware/software package for the Finance Department and ultimately the City. The staff is presenting the three choices we believe to be the best for your review and consideration. , Computoservice, Inc. (CSI) a leader in the field for such packages was the correct decision for the City of Mounds View in 1986. Over the last several years CSI has been perceived by many cities to be concentrating on developing their other business ventures at the expense of improving the municipal software package. Any enhancement to their present municipal financial package comes with a large price tag (one such enhancement was priced at $180,000). When CSI was asked to provide the City with a bid for hardware to handle our needs, it took weeks and several requests from staff to receive the proposal. Since the hardware/software proposal was supplied to us, no one from CSI has contacted the City. Through our investigation we have spoken to many cities that have left Computoservice, Inc. or are looking at other software companies. III The other two vendors are Precision Computer Systems (PCS) and TR Funds which are well-respected companies in the field of financial software packages for municipalities. PCS and TR Funds came on-site to demonstrate their respective products and review the City's present computer hardware. Both companies received high marks for customer support and their financial software. Neither company charges for annual enhancements and they have encouraged customer input that improved the overall package for municipalities. Cities were able to receive customized programs, were satisfied with the price, and service has been prompt. Staff considers TR Funds to the best choice for the City of Mounds View. We are presently using their Fixed Assets software package and are happy with both the package itself and the support we have received from TR Funds. TR Funds is located in White Bear Lake which offers closer support then PCS out of Sioux Falls, SD and CSI out of Mankato. The TR Funds price for the complete software package, including support, was lower then PCS plus, TR Funds has agreed to cap their annual support fees for five years. They would use the City's present Novell network which in the future will allow for inquiry from staff other then Finance. The Staff does wish to keep the City's Utility Billing (UB) with Computoservice for another year. The UB financial software package is good and has been programmed to work with the new meter system. Staff believes that it would be in the best interest of the City and our citizens to stay with the present system until any and all interface problems are handled. All financial software packages except UB could be pulled from the present hardware system freeing the system to better handle UB billing and reporting. The City could continue •with support for both the UB software and the present hardware in 1997 at a cost of approximately $3,586. By purchasing the financial software in 1996 staff will have time to set up and convert the data in the various programs before year-end. There would be time to run some parallel procedures and data for a smooth