Finance Committee Page 5
October 5, 2016
ON THE QUESTION
Alderman Siegel
| understand that we are getting this licensing and the number of seats that we are paying for is very high. |
understand that we can’t use a generic login and that it’s not simultaneous users. | saw the contract but, do we
really have 55 people that are accessing this particular module and that seemed pretty high.
Mr. Codagnone
It does seem pretty high. The way the user licenses work in this particular ERP system is very convoluted.
We've had many discussions with them about it. | myself have to have a full financial license and all | do is
approve requisitions. My admin in the IT Division submits a requisition | just go into Lawson and click approve
and for that | need a full license. People do a variety of things within Lawson and they are not full financial
people but that’s the way their licenses are structured.
Alderman Siegel
Just as a follow-up, | understand that is the case but 55 is still high. Are you saying that any department head
that approves any purchase at all has to have a license seat?
Mr. Codagnone
Yes.
Alderman Siegel
Plus every single person in finance? How did we get to the 55? The audit was performed by who, Lawson?
Mr. Codagnone
Yes, by Lawson. When we first implemented the application a few year back no one in the city was really
familiar with how Lawson worked so it was a rough guess on how many licenses we needed. They purchased
them very conservatively at the time and then two years ago we came before the Finance Committee
requesting the purchase of additional licenses. At that time, INFOR basically gave us a break and ignored
some of the licenses that we were short on and those are the ones that we are coming back now for. They
came back with an astronomical number two years ago and we basically told them that we couldn’t afford it
and we didn’t budget for it and they worked with us. They gave us a very decent discount on the pricing and
also said that they would allow us to slide basically on these particular licenses and they would catch up on us
later. Now is later.
Alderman Siegel
That have really caught up on us.
Mr. Codagnone
Right.
Alderman Siegel
Those licensing terms in my opinion, are onerous, I’m sorry to say.
