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 3 Government Agencies
Business Partnership Between SunGard HTE and ACOM
Helps Ease Fiscal Strains At Government Offices
THE BACKGROUND
Business offices at tax-supported institutions such as
municipalities, county governments and utilities struggle under the
challenge to deliver high-level service under tight fiscal restraints.
Most are under the supervision of elected officials, boards, and
councils that are understandably reluctant to impose new levies
on their constituents.
Hence, when more things can be accomplished with fewer
dollars, it’s “win-win” all around. Sometimes, solutions are found in
cooperative vendor relationships, such as the business
partnership between SunGard HTE and ACOM -- one that has
helped nearly 100 municipalities and other government agencies
with iSeries (AS/400) environments to improve service levels,
upgrade office efficiency and conserve taxpayer dollars by
optimizing back office practices that typically have been
performed manually.
THREE GOVERNMENT AGENCIES
City of Great Falls, Montana
At the City of Great Falls, Montana (which uses the SunGard HTE
financial back office system) modernization of form and check
production processes was under consideration for a long time,
with neither the city administration nor the city council satisfied
with the way things were being done, according to Systems
Analyst Tom Pike.
The processes involved the costly periodic purchase and inventory
of pre-printed, pre-numbered forms for payroll and accounts
payable checks, as well as all of the other forms used by the City.
Once the forms or checks were printed, burst and sorted, there was
the manual follow-up, signing, stuffing and mailing.
Pike evaluated several systems and selected two software
systems developed by ACOM Solutions, Inc.:
- EZeDocs/400 -- an electronic document design, production
and distribution solution.
- EZPayManager/400 -- a comprehensive payment management solution, with both MICR laser printer and
electronic payment capabilities.
Both solutions are host resident on the iSeries (AS/400) and allow
users to replace expensive preprinted check and document forms
with electronic templates.
And when ACOM announced its new PC-resident
EZDesigner/400 32-bit GUI-based form and check design tool,
Pike immediately purchased it as well.
One of ACOM’s installation specialists created their first form,
after which Pike designed check forms for payroll, direct
deposit advices, utility statements, 2003 W2 statements and
1099 forms. Later, he also designed forms for GMBA
accounts payable checks and put them into service.
Pike has been extremely pleased with ACOM’s solutions.
The bi-directional design capability of EZDesigner/400 allows
him to quickly drag-and-drop form elements to create
templates on the PC, upload them to the AS/400, and
download them back to the PC for easy modification.
City of Rancho Palos Verdes, California
Rancho Palos Verdes is a community of 45,000 residents,
comprised primarily of private homes and a smattering of
multiple residence buildings. The city has no industry and
only a small amount of commercial activity. Its income is
derived mainly from property taxes, utility taxes, license fees
and franchise taxes.
When city officials decided to modernize their accounting
system, they transitioned from an IBM System 36 to an
AS/400. The business management software that had been
in use was clearly unusable and the city’s finance director
selected SunGard HTE to replace it. The accounting side
includes: general ledger, accounts payable, cash receipts
and project costing. It is supplemented by specialized
SunGard HTE modules, including Business Licenses,
Payroll, Land and Parcel Management.
Finance Director Dennis McLean also indicated that he had
no further interest in impact printers but instead wanted to
output reports, forms and checks on a laser printer using
blank paper stock. He examined two solutions that were
compatible with SunGard HTE and selected ACOM’s
EZeDocs/400 and EZPayManager/400 along with two of
ACOM’s MICR-enhanced laser printers for producing checks
on blank security check stock.
The finance department staff assumed responsibility for
implementing the check and form templates. Using an
existing form as a model, the accounting staff created an
electronic template of their accounts payable check in only
one and one-half days.
With the learning curve negotiated, the staff next created a
payroll department direct deposit form template. Check forms
were followed by the business license form, which was a
more complex implementation process since it was an odd
size designed for use with a carriage printer, and which
involved producing a copy. The department used 8.5” x 11”
stock with two perforations, printing on the top two sections –
one copy for the client and one for the city -- and discarding
the bottom thirds. Other forms now in use include: W2s, 1099s,
quarterly payroll tax forms, and purchase orders.
“Now it’s easy to print checks daily, instead of running them every
two weeks and manually typing up individual checks,” McLean
says. “Loading the printer is simple and fast, since we don’t have
to burn forms to adjust register when we print and we don’t have
to worry about secure inventory and logging numbers. It’s a
streamlined, cost-effective process.”
San Bernardino Department of Water
The City of San Bernardino (California) Department of Water
issues 40,000 utility bills per month, in runs of 5,000 or more in a
single day. It also issues between 200 and 400 checks per
month, most for utility refunds.
For years, utility bills and disbursements were churned out on preprinted
multipart forms using dot matrix report printers that were
fed data by an IBM mainframe computer. The forms were burst
and decollated, then manually sorted, stuffed, and mailed. IT
operations ran in 24-hour mode and it was not unusual, says IT
Director Pat Rogers, for a billing or payment process to consume
seven or eight hours of staff time.
When the department decided to upgrade its back office
processes, it migrated to an IBM AS/400 and a customer
information software (CIS) suite from SunGard HTE Inc. The
software included SunGard HTE’s utility billing module, land
management module and a customer reporting module.
Initially, a laser-printer-based third party check and document
output solution was selected, but after assessing its cost and
experiencing extensive implementation delays, the contract was
cancelled. Rogers settled on ACOM’s EZeDocs/400 and
EZPayManager/400 software solutions, which integrate
seamlessly with HTE software and cost only about one-quarter as
much as the outsourced solution.
Rogers and his staff installed the software and worked on forms
design for about a day, consulting with ACOM by telephone.
Within two or three days, they were testing templates and within
two weeks, the department was live with the ACOM solutions.
Processes that often went on all night in pre-HTE/ACOM days are
now accomplished in only a couple of hours, Rogers says. Two
33-page-per-minute laser printers have long since paid for
themselves through savings in labor and equipment costs. An
OCR barcode capability has enhanced efficiency by imprinting
postal codes on bills and by allowing the use of an automated
remittance processor for returned stubs. And in late 2003, Rogers
further built out his SunGard HTE solution, adding modules for
general ledger (GMBA), human resources, applicant tracking,
payroll, and fixed assets, all of which will use electronic
templates and laser printed production.
SUCCESS
The problems confronted and solved in Great Falls, Rancho
Palos Verdes and San Bernardino are shared not only by
most government agencies, but also in business back offices
throughout the land, anywhere that expense control and
efficiency are continuing challenges. If you have a similar
problem you are looking to solve, you can visit ACOM online
at www.acom.com/iseries, or call ACOM at 800-603-6768.
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