Supplementary Agenda Monday 23 April 2012 Council Chambers Main Road Speers Point 7.00pm

Transcription

1 Supplementary Agenda Monday Council Chambers Main Road Speers Point 7.00pm Matters Referred: Extension of CMS software Brian Bell General Manager Note: Council Meeting Agendas will be available for download from the City website by 5.00pm on the Tuesday prior to the meeting date (

2 Ordinary Council Meeting Index Details Page No Matters Referred - Monday SP046 Extension of CMS software

3 Matters Referred - Monday 12SP046 Council Ref: Report By: Extension of CMS software F2010/02167/25 - D Manager Corporate Information - Mark Piper Précis: Council is developing its performance management capability through the implementation of the Corporate Management System (CMS) using an integrated software suite from CAMMS. This proposal recommends to Council that additional CMS modules be purchased and, due to the proprietary technology and specialised nature of the software involved, that a tender process would not be appropriate in the circumstances. Council has negotiated significant discounts on these software products and seeks to establish a strategic partnership with CAMMS. Recommendation: A. Due to the proprietary technology and specialised nature of the software involved, Council acknowledge exceptional circumstances exist that would prevent an effective tender process for the extension of the CMS software currently installed. B. Council approve the purchase of additional CMS modules (Sycle, Power Data, and Data Warehouse) for an initial cost of $172,800 and an ongoing cost of $29,110 pa. Background: In 2011, Council purchased software products from CAM Management Solutions (CAMMS) after a selective quotation process. These products are known as Interplan (corporate planning), IRM (risk management), IPM (project management), BMC (budget management), and LMC (online learning courses) and form Council s Corporate Management System (CMS). Council undertook market research and product demonstrations from various suppliers which indicated the CAMMS suite of products was the most suitable to our business needs - providing an integrated corporate performance management solution, with alignment of corporate planning to risk and project management. Interplan, IRM and respective LMC courses have been operational since September The implementation of BMC has not yet commenced. Council is presently working with CAMMS to develop the IPM product to complement it s Project Management Framework (PMF). Council has negotiated a significant fee reduction for the IPM custom modifications and customisation of the IPM LMC courses at nil cost. Additionally CAMMS have offered Council a partnership arrangement through a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) agreement, providing a range of mutual benefits

4 The benefits include upgrading to CAMMS Sycle product (nil capital, reduced implementation costs). Sycle is a consolidated platform (portal) for the existing products and offers further opportunities to use new products such as Power Data. Sycle provides users with a single screen to manage and update all actions from each of the other products, thereby simplifying these tasks for users. Access to the Learning Management Centre is also from the Sycle home page. Power Data is purchased as a separate product but is embedded in the Sycle product and accessible from the home page. It will provide Council with graphical performance management data from each of the CAMMS products, as well as other corporate systems (if desired and integration/connectors purchased). Power Data provides greater flexibility with customisable dashboards, charts and scorecards, and analysis of business information. This data and the graphical representation can be used in legislative and internal reporting documents. It will provide managers with daily business intelligence from a single repository. These features will reduce the time and effort of staff to keep data up-to-data and in the extraction of data from multiple locations and formats for the production of reports. CAMMS have offered Council a further proposal for consideration of the Data Warehouse product. Data Warehouse provides data structures which are purpose-built for local government business functions and reporting requirements. CAMMS Data Warehouse is based on Microsoft s Business Intelligence (BI) database platform and will integrate data from multiple source systems (such as Councils Online) into the CAMMS suite. Significantly reduced pricing has been offered via the MOU partnership arrangement whereby Council will become a CAMMS reference site both nationally and internationally. The MOU provides mutual benefits to Council and CAMMS, and will maximise Council s present investment in the software platform. Council has had significant input to date in the further development of CAMMS IPM product and would continue to have direct input into the development roadmap of all CAMMS products through the MOU. There is no commitment to purchase further products from CAMMS by signing the MOU. Council can choose to upgrade to Sycle with implementation costs only, and not purchase Power Data or Data Warehouse. The discounted quotations for Power Data and Data Warehouse are due to Council s interest in procuring these products to meet business needs, regardless of the MOU offer. Proposal: That Council proceeds with the ongoing development of its performance management capability by purchasing additional CMS software modules Sycle, Power Data, and Data Warehouse. Objective Improved corporate performance management, decision making and reporting How Objective will be met The implementation of the Sycle portal will provide staff and managers access to all CAMMS products which Council has previously purchased and to manage all actions from one screen. Staff and managers will be trained to design their own Executive Information System (EIS) - 4 -

5 tools to suit reporting needs and make decisions in a timely manner to achieve performance targets. Cultural change and transition from production of hard copy monthly management reports to individually configurable dashboards to suit different purposes is implemented and accepted by managers. Improved access and analysis of KPI data from existing corporate systems including the CAMMS products The implementation of Power Data and Data Warehouse provides managers and staff with self-service access through a central system to obtain performance data and make timely decisions. Data from multiple systems can be analysed from a single location and the information can be easily exported for various reports and legislative needs. Due to the proprietary technology and specialised nature of the software involved, it is proposed that Council invoke exceptional circumstances provisions under Section 55(1) of the Local Government Act and purchase these modules without requiring a tender process. Consultation: Consultation with the Director Corporate Services has confirmed the high priority of the business objectives to be addressed by the new CMS modules, and capital funding is available in the current financial year. Council s Procurement Coordinator was consulted with respect to procurement policy and the difficulty of conducting a tender process in the circumstances where the new modules used proprietary technology, were purpose built for local government and needed to be tightly integrated with the previously installed CMS software. The Procurement Coordinator advised extenuating circumstances as defined under Section 55(1) of the Local Government Act 1993 (NSW) would apply and the Council s normal procurement policy could be set aside. The proposal has also been reviewed by Council s Tender Panel. Council consulted with independent IT analyst company Ovum for an assessment of the business intelligence marketplace. The CAMMS Data Warehouse product is purposebuilt for the local government environment however it uses an underlying business intelligence product from Microsoft. Adoption of the CAMMS Data Warehouse product implies adoption of the Microsoft BI product set. This is consistent with Council s IT strategic direction. Ovum provided strong recommendation for the Microsoft Business Intelligence platform for organisations such as Council Microsoft will continue to be one of the best choices for small to medium-sized organizations that have a Microsoft footprint. Also, Microsoft s BI capabilities are designed primarily to serve its installed base in Microsoft Office. This is a critical consideration given the failure of many BI implementations due to overwhelming complexity for the normal user

6 Implications: Policy Implications: There are no policy implications arising from the proposal. Environmental Implications: There are no environmental implications arising from this proposal, apart from migrating from paper-based to online performance reporting. Social Implications: There are no social implications arising from this proposal. Financial Implications: There are specific savings, in terms of avoided cost, from purchasing the CMS modules under the current proposal. These exceed $80,000 based waived licence costs for Sycle and 50% discounts for Power Data and Data Warehouse under the MOU agreement. The overall financial benefits for the Council will be significant but are difficult to quantify. The benefits will arise from improvements in performance management and decision-making by Council staff, and through savings in the administrative effort to gather information, analyse and present performance data. The cost implications from this proposal are outlined below (all amounts are exclusive of GST). No additional funding allocation will be required. Software Licence Purchase Sycle, Power Data, Data Warehouse, plus related integrations and data connectors $102,000 Implementation Services - Sycle, Power Data, Data Warehouse - incl. project scoping & planning, project management, technical coversion - 44 days quoted First Year Licence Fees - Sycle, Power Data, Data Warehouse, plus related integrations and data connectors $50,400 $20,400 Initial investment: $172,800 Ongoing Annual Licence Fees - Sycle, Power Data, Data Warehouse, plus related integrations and data connectors $29,110 pa (with CPI indexing) Funding is available in the existing IT&IM Strategic Plan allocation for the current financial year to cover the capital expenditure. Ongoing expenditure for annual licence fees will be funded through savings in Council Online operational expenditure negotiated under the new contract effective 1 May

7 Risk and Insurance Implications: There are minimal risk implications arising from this proposal (outlined below). The mitigation actions identified below will result in a low residual risk. (i) (ii) (iii) Implementation effort and resource requirements may be under-estimated. The mitigation action will be to prepare a Project Management Plan and Schedule based on achievable timeframes for the required work effort and available resources for approval. Obtain commitment from CAMMS CEO to provide appropriate CAMMS resources with agreed timeframes. Sycle upgrade may impact on the IPM implementation schedule due to logical sequencing and constraints of certain tasks and utilisation of the same project resources. The mitigation action will be to consider the IPM Implementation Schedule when determining the timing of the Sycle upgrade to minimise any impacts on the IPM implementation. It is highly desirable that Sycle is implemented before IPM to avoid additional training and organisational change management effort. Any impact on the IPM schedule in the short term will be compensated by savings in training effort in the schedule later. Alternate vendors may challenge Council for not going to tender. The risk of this is low given the proprietary technology and purpose-built nature of the software. The implicit adoption of the Microsoft Business Intelligence platform is the only area where challenge would be possible. The mitigation action will be to obtain independent comparative analysis of the BI marketplace relative to Council requirements. This has been undertaken. There are no insurance implications arising from this proposal. Options: Council undertook market research last year and identified that there were no comparable products which provided an integrated solution spanning corporate planning, performance management, risk management and project management, and with Council s existing corporate systems. CAMMS offered an existing proven solution at a competitive price. The Interplan, IRM and integration packages have been implemented, and considerable effort and resources have been contributed to the further development of the IPM product to match Council s Project Management Framework. The Sycle product is offered to Council as free product upgrade (nil capital purchase, reduced implementation costs only) as part of the MOU offer. Implementation costs and other CAMMS services are offered at a discounted rate. Power Data is a new product providing a superior solution for analysing and presenting corporate performance data. Data Warehouse is also a new product which would allow us to better analyse performance data from external corporate systems (Councils Online in particular) and is fully integrated with Power Data and Sycle. These products will meet Council s needs in the short to medium-term and are compatible with Council s existing systems. It would not be cost effective at this time to go back to the market and work with other vendors to develop products to meet Council s short to medium-term business requirements. The pricing of the products and implementation services is at a highly discounted rate to the list price and is significantly less than if Council sought to find alternative products. Following the CAMMS demonstration of Sycle, Power Data and Data Warehouse on 3 April, Council can be confident that Sycle and Power Data would be a good investment. For a relatively modest expenditure they build on the previous investment in the CAMMS - 7 -

8 platform and will provide substantial improvements in the user experience and data analysis capability. Further, there are definite advantages in migrating to this version of the CAMMS suite prior to further rollout of the system to Council staff in 2012/13. With respect to Data Warehouse there are additional factors to consider, however it can be argued that the software provides a low risk entry-point for building Council s business intelligence (BI) capability. A comprehensive investigation of CAMMS Data Warehouse, and the business intelligence software marketplace more generally, will take some months. Council would need to compare the underlying platform (Microsoft Business Intelligence) against the main alternatives particularly Oracle Fusion. A market-based assessment would require detailed definition of functional requirements, vendor briefings and demonstrations, and possibly site visits for each. Alternately, we could take a calculated risk and proceed with Data Warehouse as a medium-term strategy and review this in 3 years. Data Warehouse is being developed specifically to work with the other CAMMS products Council has purchased and has been specifically designed for the local government sector. It is based on a mainstream software platform (Microsoft Business Intelligence) which is at the user-friendly and flexible end of the market. Microsoft has a strategy to integrate its BI features into day-to-day tools such as Excel. This compares with Oracle which is at the large commercial corporation end of the market and supports complex, high volume analysis probably beyond the requirements of Council. Councils Online is based on Oracle products, however the long-term use of Oracle at Council is uncertain beyond the end of the current Councils Online contract. Without any further analysis we can safely assume Data Warehouse will meet our business intelligence needs for the next 2-3 years. The upfront investment of $35,000 in Data Warehouse (includes Microsoft BI), plus a similar amount for implementation, is modest compared to the likely cost of the alternatives (e.g Oracle Fusion). Further investigation at this time is unlikely to present a better solution. Conclusion: That Council accept the following recommendations: 1. Due to the proprietary technology and specialised nature of the software involved, Council acknowledge exceptional circumstances exist that would prevent an effective tender process for the extension of the CMS software currently installed. 2. Council approve the purchase of additional CMS modules (Sycle, Power Data, and Data Warehouse) for an initial cost of $172,800 and an ongoing cost of $29,110 pa. Director Corporate Services - Wayne Jack Attachments: Nil