By retiring 100 legacy and manual systems and working with Solbourne, a Certified Advantage Partner in the Oracle PartnerNetwork, to implement Oracle E-Business Suite, the City of St. Petersburg achieved a broad range of business benefits and moved to a standardized single-instance computing model, allowing it to maximize resources and provide enhanced services to citizens and staff.

"St. Petersburg is Florida's fourth largest city, and our growth over the past few decades has resulted in increased demands for more services. In order to make the best use of taxpayer dollars, we needed to implement an integrated technology solution that would streamline our business processes and scale our operations," said Tish Elston, Deputy Mayor and City Administrator, City of St. Petersburg. "The Oracle solution has provided us with greater insight into our business data and has allowed us to improve many processes across human resources, procurement and contracts/grants management. These improvements have freed our staff to work on strategic programs and provide our citizens with the best possible service."

"The City of St. Petersburg's selection of Oracle E-Business Suite will continue to help the city streamline its business processes, improve overall efficiency and deliver enhanced services to citizens," said Oracle Public Sector Senior Vice President Mark Johnson. "We look forward to working with the City as it continues to realize a sizable return on its investment."

St. Petersburg Improves Human Resources Management
Oracle Human Resources Management and Oracle Self-Service Human Resources - key components of the new Oracle platform - allow employees to go online to update personnel records, enroll in benefits and check pay-slips. The system also enables managers to handle employee promotions and transfers online with a simple one-step process.

In addition, the new system has allowed St. Petersburg to automate its employee training and recruiting programs, relieving staff of many error-prone data-entry tasks. Oracle Learning Management provides Web-based enrollment and tracking, reducing the need for printed catalogs and training materials. The system also tracks employee performance in training classes, updating records automatically and distributing notices for upcoming classes.

Using Oracle iRecruitment, candidates apply for jobs online while managers use built-in routing and workflow tools to streamline the process. The city also saw a vast improvement in efficiency by switching to Oracle Advanced Benefits, which eliminated paper enrollment forms and reduced a significant amount of back-office data entry. In the first year, almost every city employee used the online system, and about one-third made changes online.

The new Oracle platform has enabled the city to reduce paperwork, as well as employee phone calls and visits to the HR office. Because of the shift to self-service, the city was able to redeploy one-third of its records-keeping personnel.

New System Transforms City's Procurement Function
Previously, the city's decentralized purchasing structure and multiple systems made it difficult to leverage the city's buying power. The city reengineered its procurement processes and implemented a centralized system, based on Oracle Purchasing and Oracle iProcurement. The city has seen a ten-fold increase in the number of requisitions going through the purchasing department, representing a shift of about 25,000 requisitions annually from department sub-systems to the central online system. In addition, improved buying power and centralized procurement save the city an estimated $4.9 million annually. The new system also improves overall visibility into the purchasing process, enabling employees to go online to track the status of purchase orders from requisition through payment. The city can also use the new system to analyze spending patterns, helping it better align purchasing policies with the city's goals.

Automated Contract Management Helps Reduce Risk
St. Petersburg has more than 3,000 contracts with vendors and service providers. In the past, individual departments monitored and renewed contracts in their domain, keeping track of insurance and warranty expiration dates, as well as inspection and appraisal deadlines. This approach was prone to human error, exposing the city to risk.

By implementing Oracle Procurement Contracts to centralize contract management, St. Petersburg has introduced a workflow-driven alert system to ensure that key contract deadlines are made. The system will help enable the city to proactively minimize risk by alerting managers to actions they must take for contract compliance. Also, by using pre-loaded templates for contract renewals, estimated at 800 contracts each year, officials expect to reduce the legal department's workload by about 2,400 hours - an annual savings of $151,000.

New System Streamlines Grants Accounting
The new system allows the City of St. Petersburg to more effectively manage its portfolio of grants, which fund initiatives ranging from housing and public safety programs to childcare and parks and recreation programs. In order to get reimbursed for these programs, the city must track all associated costs - including rent, office supplies, equipment and labor. Previously, managers needed to access data in several systems and combine the information in a spreadsheet - a time-consuming and error-prone process. By deploying Oracle Grants, the city can track project budgets online and capture cost information in one place. The system comes with tools that help project managers monitor costs more closely and also links to the payroll system to capture time spent by employees on specific grant projects.

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