ERP Advisory Services

GFOA’s services are organized into separate tasks. Each task builds off of earlier tasks to help governments through the process of evaluating needs, determining the appropriate scope and strategy for moving forward, establishing governance structures, and

Tasks are listed below:

• Process Improvement
• Develop Request for Proposal (RFP)
• Vendor Selection
• Contract Negotiations
• Implementation Transition
• Implementation and Acceptance

Many consulting firms take the approach to wait on business process improvement activities until after the software vendor is on board. GFOA strongly disagrees with this approach. Relying 100% on software vendors to develop a to-be definition requires the City to buy software prior to truly identifying its needs. Software vendors also will focus on configuring software and are prone to re-creating existing (bad) processes in the new system. Our proposal includes added services for GFOA to take a lead role in identifying business process change prior to and along with the development of the RFP. 

GFOA’s mapping process is a highly collaborative one and will involve the participation of a wide variety of stakeholders. This step is extremely important to the success of the project and allows various stakeholders to better understand existing processes (including limitations and inefficiencies).

Once maps are developed, GFOA consultants will conduct an analysis to benchmark the existing processes against recognized government and public sector best practices 

GFOA has a template RFP that was specifically designed for ERP procurement and that we have continually updated as required by changes in the ERP market. When complete, the RFP document will incorporate information developed with many of the other deliverables from this project including: 

• Procurement terms and conditions
• Detailed vendor response templates
• Functional Requirements
• Interface Definition 
• Technical Documentation 
• Key Objectives / Goals / Critical Success Factors for the Project
• Service Level Expectations
• Other information necessary for vendors to prepare a detailed response that meets the City’s needs.

A key part of the RFP will be the development of detailed functional requirements that will be important throughout the selection project and throughout implementation. For the processes that are determined to be in scope, GFOA consultants will work with the City project team members to review, validate and ultimately make decisions on the high-level to-be process definition.

The business process decisions will then guide the functional requirements for each major step in the process. GFOA focuses functional requirements development on business process. At each step in the business process, we will determine both the system requirements and implementation requirements and document those using a Microsoft Excel template that will be included in the eventual RFP. Requirements development focuses on functional requirements that define “what” needs to be completed (such as tasks, outputs, interfaces, calculations, processing, etc.) and not on “how” the system or the organization handles tasks currently. This allows for future improvement and full utilization of the system tools and built-in processes to make the government more efficient.

Services Provided

• Requirements Review
• Requirements Development
• RFP Development

GFOA’s position as a mission focused non-profit organization is completely independent and can provide truly objective recommendations. GFOA does not implement software and has no interest in expanding into this role in the future.  Our focus is exclusively on providing unbiased recommendations to our clients and all GFOA members and public sector organizations.With our consulting experience and continued research, GFOA has been able to improve its approach and generate additional value for our clients through reduced costs, reduced risk, and best practice recommendations to improve not only technology but also business process

Services Provided

• Proposal Review
• Evaluation Team Facilitation
• Evaluation Team Training
• Demo Script Development
• Demo Facilitation 

GFOA provides negotiation of software license contracts, software maintenance agreements, hosting / SaaS agreements or implementation services agreements.  In addition, GFOA is a leader in establishing standards for development of the statement of work and service level agreements.

Services Provided

• Lead Contact Negotiations
• Statement of Work Development 
• Service Level Agreements

Following contract execution, GFOA provides services to help facilitate a smooth start to the implementation project.

Services Provided

• Develop a readiness project plan. 
• Monitor initial activity from the implementation vendor for contract compliance.
• Assess implementation risks for the project

GFOA brings the expertise gained from our work with hundreds of public sector organizations on ERP projects to the implementation phase. We act as an owner’s representative during implementation, focusing on deliverable review, contract compliance, and process improvement. 

Services Provided

• Contract compliance
• Issue resolution 
• Best practice review
• Project management
• Deliverable review
• Testing support