The City of San Luis Obispo, California and Sierra-Cedar are excited to announce that the City went live with Oracle ERP Cloud on October 1, 2018. The City of San Luis Obispo engaged Sierra-Cedar for this citywide initiative to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency through the implementation of the Oracle Cloud Application Suite. This modern business platform enables the City to deploy leading business practices to improve productivity, deliver higher quality services, and support better decision making in the areas of Finance, Procurement, Project Management, and Financial Reporting.
“Implementing Oracle ERP Cloud was the first step for the City to automate and standardize our purchasing and accounting processes. Our next step is to continuously improve how we manage our business and decision-making processes as we gather intelligence in the new system,” says Vinay Jathanna, Project Manager at the City of San Luis Obispo. “Sierra-Cedar consultants have been valuable in guiding us through this successful journey with their skills and experience and we share this success with them.”
As a result of the Oracle ERP Cloud implementation, the City is realizing the following benefits:
- Verification of available funds. Previously a manual process done after the fact, the new process enables a budgetary control check to verify availability of funds before procuring goods or services.
- Punch-Out(s). Allows requisitioners direct access to Office Depot’s website to leverage discounted pricing and default lines directly to the requisition providing not only process efficiency, but also lowering total spend.
- Paperless Supplier Invoice Processing. Imaging and optical character recognition (OCR) provide for streamlined exception-based supplier invoice processing with Purchase Order matching.
- Control and Compliance. Procurement contract/project control and compliance allow for the identification of underperformers “early” to lower total spend while adjusting/canceling suboptimal projects.
- Spend analysis. Ability to analyze what, when, how often, and how much of a particular good or service is purchased such that more competitive contracts are negotiated.
“Sierra-Cedar is our ‘go-to partner’ for delivering transformative Oracle Cloud Application solutions to mid-sized governments. Their talented resources and dedication to customer success over the past 20 years are unrivaled,” says Josh Ezring, Vice President of State and Local Government Sales at Oracle Corporation. “We are proud that our ‘next-generation’ Oracle Cloud Applications are being used as the platform for business process improvement at the City of San Luis Obispo and are pleased to be associated with such a progressive Modern Local Government.”
The project was initiated based on an assessment conducted by the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) and its key recommendations for innovation across all departments. Future phases of the modernization program are scheduled to go live in 2019. The second phase will include Human Resources, Benefits, Learning, Performance, Time Management, Absence Management, and Payroll; the third phase will include Budget Development and Budgetary Reporting. Throughout these three phases, Sierra-Cedar is providing Project Management, Functional Consulting, Technical Development, Training, and Change Management services.
“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for the City to improve its business processes to operate more efficiently and effectively by deploying the Oracle Cloud Applications. Over the past seven months, we have worked closely and collaboratively with the City to design, construct, and deploy the new system and related processes ‘on time and on budget’ to realize the objectives of the ambitious Motion Project,” says Brian Christenson, Vice President of Public Sector Solutions at Sierra-Cedar. “The City has been an outstanding organization to work with, and we look forward to building upon our success in the remaining two phases to create a progressive and sustainable application platform upon which the business of government will be conducted at the City for many years to come.”
About the City of San Luis Obispo, California
The City of San Luis Obispo is a full-service city that provides police, fire, water, sewer, streets, transit, parking, planning, building, engineering, and parks and recreation services to the community. Its beginnings are traced to the founding of Mission San Luis Obispo de Tolosa in 1772 by Father Junípero Serra as the fifth mission in the California chain of 21 missions. The City’s ideal weather and natural beauty provide numerous opportunities for outdoor recreation at nearby City and State parks, lakes, beaches, and wilderness areas.
The City has a thriving population of approximately 50,000 and is located eight miles from the Pacific Ocean midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles at the junction of Highway 101 and scenic Highway 1. The City’s distance from major metropolitan areas to the north (San Francisco Bay Area) and south (Los Angeles) have allowed it to retain its historic and scenic qualities, which contribute to the superb quality of life residents enjoy and attract visitors from many other areas. In fact, in 2010, the City was dubbed the “Happiest City in North America” by National Geographic author Dan Buettner.
About Sierra-Cedar
Sierra-Cedar is distinguished as a leading provider of Oracle Application services for government and education clients, having delivered more than 2,000 such Oracle projects over the past 25 years. It is an Oracle Platinum Partner that uses advanced tools, templates, and methodologies to facilitate efficient, accelerated, low-risk, and high-quality implementations with a focus on knowledge transfer. Over the years, it has delivered many transformative Oracle projects for cities and counties. This experience equips Sierra-Cedar with valuable insights into typical municipal business process requirements, data structures, transactions, organization structures, and culture.