In a few months, San Benito County will start using a new data management structure with the implementation of its $1 million enterprise resource planning system. According to the county: “The technology infrastructure planned for the project has the capability to store terabytes of fiscal and personnel data. In lay terms, this is enough storage to meet the needs of the County and its partner agencies for the next ten-plus years.” So, what is it?
In the business world, “Enterprise resource planning (ERP) is management software – usually a suite of integrated applications – that a company can use to store and manage data from every stage of business, including: product planning, cost and development, manufacturing, marketing and sales, inventory management, shipping and payment.” The concept has been around since the 1960s
In its basic operation, an ERP system provides an integrated real-time view of core processes, using common databases maintained by a database management system. ERP systems track resources, commitments and payroll. The applications that make up the system share data across the various departments that entered the data. ERP facilitates information flow among all functions and manages connections to outside stakeholders, according to Wikipedia.
From even a cursory look, it is obvious that many of the critical functions of government mirror those of business, although the specifics are slightly different; these include as one provider detailed, “financials, procurement, tax and revenue management, customer and stakeholder portals, and full system integration are all key requirements …including compliance, security and fiscal accountability.”
This should make those who say, “Government should be run like a business” very happy because no major company in the first world runs without some in-house or contracted version of an ERP system. Frankly, in America’s complex data-driven society, it cannot be done efficiently or effectively if such a system is missing and it has been missing here. The actual ERP budget is $897,000, but that’s $1 million to me. The funding comes from reclassified Tobacco Securitization and subvented funds, but that is a topic for another day.
San Benito County is a big business that manages a lot of land, infrastructure, employees, customers, functions and finances, all in accordance with complex laws and rules. Citizens, auditors and media scrutinize everything it does. It has an obligation to provide timely and accurate information in response to public records requests and accountability to the citizens, the state and federal government. All of that requires mountains of information; an ERP system simplifies that process. More important, it allows managers to manage by making critical data available concerning the allocation and use of resources. If you do not know how overtime is being used, you cannot make good management decisions about its value.
Oh, people make do. Lacking a good ERP system, every department seems to have their own little database tucked away on their PC to suit their specific needs – but when a manager wants to know some piece of information on a project that may be stored in five places, which one is accurate? They used to say, “it’s no way to run a railroad.” Think of it that way: Should every station (department) run their own train schedule of shall it be done system wide?
I have used many of ERP system’s predecessors; the ones that worked well were of infinite value to the business. There will be growing pains as people, untrusting of change, hide their old personal databases “just in case” but if it functions well they will embrace it as it makes their life easier and produces better results.
