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Contract - Program Management Services for Customer Information System Replacement
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INFORMATION CONTACT:
John Shutak, Union County Water - Engineering, Director, 704-283-3651
ACTION REQUESTED:
Authorize the County Manager to 1) negotiate and execute an agreement substantially consistent with this agenda item, 2) exercise any renewal or extension term options set forth in the Agreement, and 3) terminate the Agreement if deemed in the best interest of the County, each in the County Manager's discretion.
PRIOR BOARD ACTIONS:
None.
BACKGROUND:
Union County Water's (UCW) existing Customer Information System (CIS), Harris NorthStar (NorthStar), is obsolete and not capable of meeting UCW's current or future needs. UCW is implementing a complete replacement with new CIS software that will be used by all UCW departments in the day-to-day management of the utility.
The CIS is a software application that acts as a central hub to manage all customer-related data, including billing, account details, usage information, payments, and service orders. The current CIS, NorthStar, has been utilized for approximately twenty years and is obsolete, lacking modern features of current technology required to better meet UCW's current or future needs. The obsolete condition of NorthStar has led to insufficient technical support, integration limitations with other systems utilized by UCW for day-to-day operations, and the need for additional software to generate essential reports for managing billing and customer accounts. In addition to being obsolete, UCW has experienced significant reliability issues with NorthStar, including frequent software crashing, slow performance, failure for work orders to transfer to UCW's asset management software, and frequent restarting of the server due to overall system failures.
Due to the unique nature and importance of this project, UCW developed a project charter for the implementation of a new CIS that identified the need for a ...
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