TEA Winner 2021: Benton County, Oregon

• Industry: County
• Location: Benton County, Oregon
• Employees: 500
• Population: 90,000
• Tyler Client Since: 2016
• Tyler Products Used: Cashiering, Content Manager, Enterprise Asset Management, Enterprise ERP powered by Munis^®, Finance Insights
• Website: www.co.benton.or.us

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Challenges

For managing public works assets, Benton County, Oregon, was using a dated, third-party database that could not connect to Enterprise ERP, its modern enterprise resource planning solution. The asset database, which wasn’t designed for comprehensive asset management, lacked audit capabilities and workflow management. The information that was available was unreliable. It was difficult to extract data in a usable format, and data input required double entry into a third-party system and Enterprise ERP.

“It was hard to use, and it was hard to get information out of,” says George Looney, Benton County’s public works finance manager. “It was a standalone program, so we had to do double entry with all of our payroll and all of our accounts payable. It just wasn’t working, and it had no GIS integration. We were keeping multiple sets of data in two different programs.”

Benton County decided to seek a comprehensive asset management solution that would integrate with the county’s financial system to improve operations.

Solution

Recognizing the value of an integrated solution, Benton County chose Tyler’s Enterprise Asset Management.

“We have been using Enterprise ERP financials since July of 2016,” says Looney. “We wanted something that integrated with our financial systems, and we knew Enterprise ERP. So the natural step was to go straight to Enterprise Asset Management.”

Despite the challenges of implementation during COVID-19, Benton County was able to go live with Enterprise Asset Management in December of 2020.

• Eliminate duplicate data entry


• Improve internal billing


• House work orders for multiple departments on the same platform


• Optimize GIS use, providing valuable information about asset location


• Simplify security, reducing multiple logins


• Provide interface uniformity, reducing training time

In addition, Benton County has found that Enterprise Asset Management allows flexibility for use in multiple departments, including roads, engineering/survey, facilities, and parks.

“One of the things I liked the most about this solution is the flexibility,” says Looney. “We’re able to customize the program to fit what the department needs are.”

Results

The county’s adoption of Enterprise Asset Management has streamlined operations and improved financial oversight and reporting. The switch has enabled more accurate budgeting and cost tracking of assets. The county now easily accesses insights into the true cost of assets, including maintenance information, which has improved internal and external billing processes.

The county is saving about four hours a week on accounts payable tasks and five hours a month on internal billing operations.

Each department is seeing improvements, including:

• Roads: Data tracking is simplified, and maps can be used in creating work orders.


• Engineering/survey: Large projects can now be tracked in different phases, which allows a better cost overview.


• Facilities: Costs and labor usage can be tracked by activity for the first time, enabling identification of what activities are better done in-house versus being contracted out.


• Parks: Costs are being tracked for each park, which will help with future budgeting.

Overall, Looney says the Tyler ERP and asset management combination will provide a more accurate financial overview of assets.

“We’ll also have the ability to do more accurate budgeting,” says Looney.