City of Nashua
Central Purchasing
229 Main Street
Nashua NH 03060
603-589-3330 Fax: 603-589-3344
May 13, 2010
Memo #10-115
TO: MAYOR LOZEAU
FINANCE COMMITTEE
SUBJECT: CONTRACT AWARD FOR FINANCIAL (ERP) SYSTEM SOFTWARE, LICENSING &
MAINTENANCE (VALUE: $687,084)
ACCOUNT: 722-64040 COMPUTER SOFTWARE -— CITY-WIDE ERP SYSTEM
ACCOUNT BALANCE REMAINING AFTER PURCHASE: $6,213,892
The City issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) and received proposals for an integrated Financial
Management software system referred to as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning), and related services
for implementation in its $7.5 million capital project entitled “NGIN" (Nashua Government iNnovation). The
funding of this project for the Teplacement and modernization of the city-wide systems that inciude
financial and other business process systems through the sale of bonds was approved by the Board of
Aldermen on July 14, 2009 through Resolution R-09-203.
Background
Over the past 28 years, the City of Nashua has created and maintained a highly customized municipal
software system based on decades old development tools and platformed on the OpenVMS operating
system. These tools have been utilized for all financial applications in the City; and custom applications
have also been created for almost every department.
The City has recognized that the migration and upgrade of these applications is necessary due to system
absolescence with the operating system and servers which are past end of life, as well as maintenance
limitations including lack of programmers, increased difficulty, expense, and risk in maintaining and
enhancing City applications, and a growing obsolescence of functionality,
In 2008, the City issued a RFP for Financial (ERP) Systems consulting services to define requirements,
solicit, and select a new financial system. An Executive Steering Committee {ESC) was appointed by the
Mayor to assist with the evaluation of bids and to operate as the oversight and advisory body for the
duration of the project.
The ESC consists of representation from key departments/divisions within the City, including Finance,
Information Technology, Schools, Purchasing, Police and Board of Aldermen as well as three community
members who have had experience with similar financial system migration projects. Contractor Schafer
Consulting assisted the City in conducting needs assessments and to gather functional requirements for
the software selection and migration process, developed a business case, and wrote an RFP,
A formal Business Case for the City’s new NGIN (Nashua Government Innovation) project was presented
to City administration and the Board of Alderman. The Business Case concluded that existing system
obsolescence and limitations pose an unmitigated threat to the City's financial data and leaves the City
unprotected and vulnerable. Furthermore, there are significant gaps between what the current systems
can do in comparison to the features of a new ERP system that represent best government practices and
features that City staff identified as a requirement. in light of these compelling conclusions, reptacement
of the current systems with commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) software solutions was the best viable
