The Clerk, by state Constitution, is the County Comptroller. Duties and responsibilities include custodian of funds, auditor, keeper of books and records and responsibility for financial reporting. From processing county payments to vendors, processing payroll for all of the Board’s employees as well as the employees of the Clerk and Supervisor of elections, and issuing financial statements, the men and women of the Clerk’s Office work to remain good stewards of taxpayer’s money.
SAP is the County Financial system of record and operated by the Clerk’s Information Technology Division. SAP announced that customers would be required to upgrade their processing system. The Clerk worked closely with Board of County Commissioner management to re-evaluate technology options and do our due diligence to establish a roadmap for modernization of many of our processes.
The foundational step in the modernization plan was a system upgrade to the newest SAP version called S/4 HANA. S/4 HANA is a cloud software that runs as a “Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)” which integrates business applications into a single place. This allows users to accelerate processes by accessing their data virtually, faster, and “in real time”. S/4 HANA offers numerous benefits that improve the overall technical and financial system implemented including:
- Fast Implementation – user-interface is easier to navigate and beginner friendly which helps reduce time spent on configuration, testing, and training.
- Flexibility of Integration – new innovations and enterprise tools that are readily available can be easily integrated to the system.
- Cost-efficient – overall costs are reduced since the system is on an annual subscription basis which already includes core licenses, the hosting of the solution and the box level support.
This process was completed in May and we are now poised to begin projects to take advantage of advancements in mobile, cloud and process automation for things such as timekeeping, time-tracking, self-service personnel changes, and training, as well as the opportunity to leverage purchasing techniques to simplify processes and accelerate modernization in order to work smarter. Stay tuned.