Large State Department

A State Department is in the planning process of procuring a System Integrator and Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution to replace the Department’s current business financial infrastructure with a next generation of systems and related business processes. Additionally, the Department desires to transition the workforce to view and operate the state's business as a dynamic enterprise in order to enhance the state's capability to operate as a business enterprise. The highlights of the Project objectives include:

  • Provide more and better financial information to decision makers and program managers.
  • Provide the opportunity for more transparency of financial information to provide a better basis for decision making and knowledge sharing to the public and the state's business partners, including the Legislature.
  • Provide tools to monitor expenditures compared to the approved budget and provide alerts when deviations occur.
  • Track statewide purchase volumes by vendor and/or commodity type to identify areas where quantity discounts might save money.
  • Facilitate workforce transition by establishing a single uniform financial management system that must be used by all state entities.
  • Reduce manual reconciliations among control agencies, state agencies, and other separately maintained systems and databases. By having a single source of financial information, manual reconciliations are minimized.

VIP partnered with the Department by providing Independent Project Oversight (IPO) and Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) services for the procurement phase and activities of the estimated $1+ billion dollar Project. The oversight activities included verifying that project deliverables were satisfied; validating that the delivered solution met the accepted requirements, verifying that the approach and deliverables produced the desired outcome; and reporting to the project executives and steering committee on the risks and overall project health, including status of the schedule, cost, scope and quality. Following a structured project oversight framework and other industry standards and best practices for this highly critical project, VIP provided an independent, unbiased assessment, monitoring, and reporting of the Project status, performance, management practices, and forecast for completion.