Transforming legacy financial, budget, procurement and HR processes for Wake County with CGI Advantage ERP

Consistently rated as one of the best places to live and work in America, Wake County is the second most populous county in North Carolina. They are one of only 22 counties in the nation with an AAA bond rating by all three major rating agencies. With a population of more than 900,000 residents, the County employs approximately 4,000 employees operating with a $1 billion operating budget and seven-year capital plan totaling $1.2 billion.

The Challenge

Wake County’s legacy FAMIS (financials) system was a mainframe technology that had outlived its useful life. Tier Technologies was unable to provide the County with a roadmap for FAMIS and the County became concerned about the future of the product’s movement to current technologies. The County also evaluated its other legacy systems, including ADPICS (procurement), BPREP (budgeting) and Genesys (HR and payroll), identifying several major challenges that impeded their ability to operate in a cost-efficient manner to conserve tax dollars and promote savings:

• Lack of integration between the systems, resulting in duplicate data entry and too many workarounds
• Process inefficiency and data integrity issues related to the need for manual processes
• The existence of several standalone systems to compensate for the lack of functionality and modern technology 
• Limited security and lack of global attributes to support changes

The County recognized that sustaining its complex operation, as well as positioning for future change, would require a new system with integrated, government functionality, modern technology, centralized data warehouse, and a friendly user interface that was cost-effective to maintain and would last well into the future. The solution would also need to be enhanced to meet the evolving needs specific to government.

To achieve their goals, the County sought software and implementation services for an integrated Finance, Budgeting, Procurement, Human Resources, Payroll and Business Intelligence system from a partner with extensive government expertise. 

“We performed an extensive evaluation of all the solutions currently on the market,” said Lib Wanner, Chief Information Officer, “(CGI Advantage) was the best fit in terms of functionality, experience in the public sector marketplace and value for the dollar.”

The Solution

After a comprehensive procurement, including evaluations of all major competitors in the marketplace, the County selected CGI and the CGI Advantage ERP solution in December 2006. With a 98% fit, CGI’s solution offered the modern technology and comprehensive functionality necessary to eliminate manual and duplicative processes and ultimately support the business of government more efficiently out-of-the-box.

The project replaced the County’s legacy FAMIS, BPREP, ADPICS and Genesys systems. The CGI solution includes the following:

• Financial Management: Base System, Asset Management, Projects and Grants
• Procurement: Professional • Budgeting: Budget Formulation, Salary and Benefits Forecasting, Budget Book Publishing
• Human Resources Management: Base System, Position Control, Recruiting and Staffing, Benefits Administration, Time and Attendance, Payroll, Employee Self-Service
• Business Intelligence

The project kicked off in April 2007 with a comprehensive review of the County’s requirements and the software. One of the things they discovered was almost 80% of their data was coming from disparate systems, with no audit trail.

In December 2007, the County went live with the first phase of the project, CGI Advantage Performance Budgeting, followed by CGI Advantage Financial Management in March 2008 and CGI Advantage Human Resource Management and Payroll in March 2010.

The Benefits

Today the County has realized the following benefits:

• Eliminated paper-based processing and distribution costs
• Eliminated redundant data entry and re-work, saving thousands of hours
• Achieved data consistency, accuracy and audit reliability
• Automated paper-intensive business processing, such as contract review and approval
• Improved access to information, such as program and services spending by department
• Improved productivity through quicker navigation, faster data entry and personalization.
• Streamlined reporting with flexible reports accessible at the desktop
• Increased accountability and budget control at the fund level
• Eliminated support and maintenance costs associated with customization, ancillary systems and labor-intensive reconciliation
• Reduced budget book compilation after final changes from two days to 2 minutes
• Improved security with a single point for change and management
• Enhanced position control with flexibility for easily tracking over-hires and end dates for grant positions
• Automated timesheets and benefit enrollment – paper process eliminated.

For more information, please contact:
cgiadvantage@cgi.com

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