For Utilities Commission Meeting [April 16, 2019]
TO: Honorable Chairperson and Commission
APPROVAL: Thomas J. Crowley, P.E., Utilities Manager
FROM: Aaron Kraft, General Manager, Veolia
Title
Recommend City Council/Rialto Utility Authority Approval of a Final Construction Work Authorization in the Amount of $825,000 for the Customer Information System Replacement and Data Transfer and Conversion Services.
(ACTION)
Body
BACKGROUND:
Rialto Water Services is currently utilizing Tyler Technology's Incode Version 9 for utility billing. Incode is financial software that originated in 1999 and utilizes old COBOL programming language. The utility billing component of the software is a small portion or plug-in module of the larger Financial Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system. Although this system is capable of billing customers for the water and wastewater services they use, it offers little to no customer data management functionality.
The latest version of Incode is Version 10 and it overlaps the utility billing function with another Tyler Technology product, "Munis Utility Billing CIS." With this overlap of functionality and the age of the software, staff anticipates Tyler Technology to discontinue support services for the version of Incode currently utilized by the City and Rialto Water Services (RWS) in the very near future.
ANALYSIS/DISCUSSION:
Due to the restraints in the utility billing software, staff has been researching Customer Information Systems (CIS) and the possibilities of acquiring a system for the utility operations. In terms of restraints, the following should be noted:
a) The City no longer uses Incode, except for some limited treasurer and animal licensing functions including payment of animal license fees.
b) Limited query capabilities making it difficult to effectively analyze data and trends.
c) Limited reports available. Many reports are predetermined by the software developer and not customizable to Rialto's nee...
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