Receive follow-up report on the upgrade status of the Infor System to the Software-as-a-Service (“SaaS”) Infor CloudSuite Management (ICM) System, review options, approve staff recommendations for a revised project budget of $4,700,130, and authorize the County Chief Technology Officer to execute a change order with RPI Consultants in the amount of $648,890 extending system go live to July 1, 2023. (No general fund Impact) (Gerney)

County staff presented the INFOR Staff report below to the Board of Supervisors on September 13, 2022. The Board decided to continue the item for decision to the September 27, 2022 meeting and asked County staff to gather additional information that would help to assist with the Board’s deliberation of the best direction for the INFOR system. County staff have gathered the following critical additional information:
 

• Board Questions and Answers (Attachment D - Board Q&A) – This document provides written responses to all of the Board questions that occurred at the September 13, 2022 meeting.
• System Benefits (Attachment E - System Benefits & Enhancement) – This document describes the major benefits the County is deriving and how that improves public service and benefits constituents by moving to INFOR Cloudsuite (Version 11).
• Project Team Views (Attachment F - Project Team Survey Results) – This survey was conducted on all key members of the Steering Committee, Project team leads, and Project team members to show their views on whether it is best for the County over the long-term to move to INFOR Version 11 or to source a new system.
• Estimated Timeline and Cost (Attachment G - Estimated Timelines & Costs) – This document attempts to bring transparency as to the timelines and costs for the two major options before the Board so that the critical elements of time and money will be taken into account before a final decision is made.   

Staff will also provide a summary presentation of the additional information to assist the deliberations at the September 27, 2022 Board meeting.

SEPTEMBER 13th REPORT

The staff report will discuss a brief background on the project, the progress to date, some of the challenges that have come as part of the implementation, the recommendation from the County’s steering committee on next steps in the implementation and the costs involved.
 
Background
The Board of Supervisors considered the Infor Upgrade project over the course of 2021 and provided the final approval to move forward on August 31, 2021. The staff report for that meeting reviewed in detail the costs and anticipated benefits associated with the project focusing on the benefits that could be derived in Finance, Human Resources, Procurement, and Information Technology. In addition, the staff report discussed alternatives to the upgrade, which at the time included either delaying the upgrade until the County was closer to the end of support date for current versions of the software or taking additional time to explore other software providers. The August 31, 2021 staff report is included as Attachment A.
 
The original project began with the timeframes noted below targeting a January 2, 2023 go-live. Below are the key phases with approximate timeframes in the original schedule:

Work Completed to Date
 
- Current State Analysis & Requirements Review:
The purpose of the current state analysis is to develop an understanding of the current processes in use and how those processes can be improved with the implementation of Infor CloudSuite.  RPI Subject Matter Experts from Financial Management, Supply Chain Management, and Human Capital Management, through a series of meetings/workshops and documentation became familiar with the County’s current business processes, procedures, policies, and data needs to properly understand the required business transformation to a future state.  Based on these discovery sessions a total of eighteen key opportunities were identified between Finance, Supply Chain and Human Capital Management. 
    
Key Deliverables

 
- Super User Enablement & Future State Design
Super User Training is designed to train users on software functionality “out of the box.”  Super User Training & Future State Design are performed together such that training is performed on a topic and then future state discussions can occur on that topic.  This approach allows the core project team to acquire an awareness of the CloudSuite solution capabilities which facilitates the team’s overall understanding of the system and gaps between “out of the box” functionality and desired future state functionality.  A new Global Ledger structure was developed that offers more functionality and flexibility than the prior structure offering improved tracking and reporting capabilities.
 
Key Deliverables

 - Data Migration & Unit Testing
The data migration & unit testing phase is designed to take data from the current system and migrate it to the CloudSuite platform based on desired future state design and functionality.  Once data migration is performed, system testing and issue resolution is performed to make sure the new system is functioning as intended.
 
Key Deliverables

Timeline Challenges
While implementation progress continues and substantial work has been completed to date, the overall project is behind schedule for the January 2, 2023 go live date.  The original project schedule, despite spanning more than one year, was relatively tight with little room for error given the magnitude of the project and amount of work that needs to be completed.  This was due, in part, to the project approval and execution of the consultant agreement taking longer than originally anticipated.
 
In addition, the project plan and organization chart developed by RPI has demanded far greater time and effort from DFS and HR managerial and executive staff than expected, including but not limited to the DFS Accounting Manager and Procurement Manager, and the HR Assistant Director.  As part of the project implementation, the County hired five limited-term positions (Accountant II, Accountant III, Lead Buyer, Sr. Payroll Technician and Sr. Personnel Analyst) to backfill staff who were expected to be assigned full-time to the project team.  While these backfill positions have been critical in allowing the project team to focus on the implementation, the time and effort required by managerial and executive staff has been a challenge given existing workload constraints. As a result, certain elements of the implementation plan have not progressed as quickly as anticipated.
 
The technical complexity of the new system has also impacted the project timeline.  While the project remains an upgrade from one version of Infor to another, the new CloudSuite version is substantially different in setup and design, and it has required a significant amount of time to learn the new system and adapt it to County business processes.  One element in particular, the Global Ledger, has taken substantial time to develop and design. However, given that the Global Ledger is the fundamental backbone of the County’s financial structure, staff believe that the additional time investment has been warranted to ensure that this critical element is done right. 

Steering Committee Recommendations
Due to the substantial amount of work that still needs to be completed and the tight timeline for implementation, the Infor Steering Committee recommends extending the go live date to July 1, 2023.  Extending the implementation timeline by six months will provide a few key benefits for the project, including:

Considering the benefits described above, both the Infor Steering Committee and the project team functional leads believe that extending the go live date to July 1, 2023 is the best option to ensure a successful implementation of the new system.  However, this recommendation does come with additional cost. Extending the implementation schedule will require an additional $648,890 in consulting services from the County’s implementation consultant, RPI. This change order will track the terms set forth in Attachment B, subject to additional revisions (but not as to time or dollar amount) in consultation with County Counsel, and allow RPI consultants to remain engaged with the Yolo County Infor CloudSuite Migration project for an extended period of time and provide up to 400 hours of technical development work that the County is unable to complete due to staffing limitations.  In addition, staff is requesting funding to cover two smaller project needs, including approximately $40,000 to implement a data archiving solution to ensure that the County’s historical data is maintained upon migration, and $36,000 to migrate the County’s MHC (check printing) solution to an on-premise platform.
 
A portion of these additional costs can be funded within the existing project budget as a result of savings from not filling one of the limited term backfill positions and utilizing available project contingency funds.  For the remainder of the costs, staff recommend using a minor amount of ACO funds and unused Infor-related funding from 2021-22.  The table below reflects the revised project budget.

Infor Cloudsuite Benefits
To date there have been numerous areas of opportunity identified across the 3 functional areas (Human Capital Management, Financial Services Management, Supply Chain) with the project leads over those functional areas expressing their excitement and support for the new system.
 
Key areas of opportunity:

- Human Capital Management

 - Supply Chain Management

 - Financial Services Management

Alternatives
There are two primary alternatives to staff’s recommendation to extend the project timeline, described further below:
 
Alternative #1 – Do not extend the project timeline and keep the original January 2023 go live date.  Under this alternative, staff would continue with the current project schedule and attempt to meet the January 2023 go live date. While this alternative would avoid additional consulting costs at this time, this option may not be realistically feasible. Meeting a January go live date would require that all members of the project team, including DFS and HR managerial staff, be dedicated full-time to the project through the remainder of the implementation.  This scenario would likely result in substantial impacts to County operations and initiatives, including:

In addition, the compressed schedule required to meet a January 1, 2023 go live date would potentially jeopardize the overall success of the project by limiting the time available for system testing and end user training. There could be in additional need to additional reconfiguration, need to postpone certain functionality, or other post go-live support costs as a result. 

Alternative #2 – Abandon the Infor CloudSuite Migration Project in its entirety. Under this scenario, staff would terminate the agreement with RPI and stop all work on the Infor upgrade project. Costs already incurred of more than $1 million would be sunk costs. The County could then either immediately begin a new RFP process for a different ERP system, or use the current version of Infor until it is no longer supported and then proceed with an RFP process. The County will also need to negotiate with Infor to end its SAAS agreements and to return to agreements prior to the approved upgrade. 
 
The County’s current version of Infor is still on a hosted solution, rather than a cloud-based Software-as-a-Service model, and is expected to lose support in approximately the next 2-3 years. While the Infor costs to-date have been significant, the cost of transitioning to a different system would be substantial. While a comprehensive study has not been performed, some relevant data points may provide an indication as to possible comparable costs if the County considers this alternative:

Future Infor Project-Related Costs
If the County continues with the Infor upgrade project, there are other project-related needs for which additional funding may be requested at a later time. These items include the following:

Innovation & Technology Services, Department of Financial Services, Health & Human Resources, Human Resources, County Administrator's Office. The Infor steering committee collaborated on the strategic direction of the Infor Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system to arrive at the present recommendation to extend go live until July, 2023.