King County ready to restart ERP effort

Computerworld - After spending $39 million on an ERP system that failed to meet management's goals for the project, King County in Washington would like to have another crack at succeeding.
Officials blamed a lack of management oversight for the failure of the ERP system, which included PeopleSoft human resources software and SAP AG's R/3 financial application. That implementation was frozen in 2000, three years after it started.
The new Accountable Business Transformation Program (ABT) calls for rolling out current versions of Oracle Corp.'s financials and PeopleSoft human resources software to about 15,000 county employees by 2009. The project is still before the King County Council's Budget and Fiscal Management Committee, which postponed discussion of the new plan last week.
The new system aims to enable departments to employ best practices for financial, budget and human resources processes, county officials said.
The ABT team, made up of in-house staff and independent consultants working under County Executive Ron Sims, needs $2.4 million in funding for preplanning work, including a business design and cost analysis. That outlay requires a vote from the county council.
An independent consultant hired by the county, Dye Management Group Inc., estimates that the cost of implementing ABT will run about $47.5 million. That figure will be re-examined next year.
"Our proposal is to implement in 2007 and finish in 2009, and if possible, we'd like to stay on schedule," said Caroline Whalen, deputy county administrative officer. "We're currently delayed, and we don't have the funding to complete the next phase of work."
The ERP saga in Seattle-based King County is a long one. Deadlines slipped in the initial rollout, and by the time the project was halted, the PeopleSoft application was installed for 5,000 workers but R/3 hadn't been installed on any systems. The county had spent $39 million by that point, officials said.
Expertise Required
A key problem holding up approval of the new system, at least for council member David Irons, is the lack of what he called a tech-savvy person to oversee the implementation.
"I've told [the ABT team] to not come back until they have a manager with the technical background to implement the system," he said. "I don't believe in giving them a blank check. We spent $40 million and ended up with virtually nothing out of it."
Irons said he believes the upgrade is mission-critical and probably should have been done 10 years ago to get more-detailed financial information to county officials. "But at the same time, we have to bring some accountability