City of Little Rock Completes Multi-Suite Lawson Software Implementation
Arkansas capital uses latest Lawson applications and technology platform to simplify data access, streamline reporting and purchasing processes
ST. PAUL, Minn. (March 06, 2007) – Enterprise software applications from Lawson Software (Nasdaq:LWSN) are now helping the city of Little Rock, Ark., speed data-sharing across departments, enhance reporting and consolidate key administrative information on a single database. The city completed implementation of the Lawson Enterprise Financial Management and Supply Chain Management application suites – and Lawson System Foundation 9.0, Lawson’s latest technology platform, in January 2007.
The city of Little Rock is the capital of Arkansas and the state’s largest city. Its 2,500 employees serve more than 183,000 citizens. Faced with disparate business systems that limited data access to a small group of employees, the city turned to Lawson to help it improve access to key financial and purchasing information and streamline business processes.
“Lawson’s government expertise and user-friendly, Web-based applications made it our best option,” said Bob Biles, finance director, city of Little Rock. “Because of the project’s scope and our limited resources, we chose to partner with Lawson Professional Services on project management. The Lawson team has played a key role in helping us go live on time and within our budget.”
Little Rock took a multi-phased approach to its Lawson implementation, starting with the financial and supply chain applications in phase one. The city created a cross-departmental project team and an executive steering committee to manage the implementation. Throughout phase one, the committee and project team conducted monthly meetings to communicate progress to other city employees and resolve any issues.
Since completing its Lawson implementation, the city has more than doubled the number of employees that access the unified system from key departments, such as human resources, payroll and accounting. This improved data access is helping the city eliminate manual processes and facilitate electronic requisition approvals via automated workflows. The new system is also helping the city enhance its reporting capabilities by consolidating critical data in a single system, replacing individual spreadsheets.
The new Lawson applications and technology platform are also helping the city reduce administrative cost by supporting more efficient purchasing processes, better budget control and improved encumbrance and grant management reporting. And, Lawson System Foundation 9.0 features the latest technology from Lawson combined with other world-class technologies, for a high-performance, standards-based technology solution. This highly secure and solid foundation provides a platform for Lawson’s next-generation applications designed for use within a service-oriented architecture (SOA).
The city is now embarking on the second phase of its Lawson rollout, which includes deployment of the Lawson Human Capital Management and Budgeting and Planning suites. Little Rock expects to be live on both applications by June 30, 2007.
“More and more, public services organizations are finding that their legacy administrative systems cannot keep pace with the pressures to increase productivity while providing new services at minimal cost,” said Ken Munson, industry marketing director, Government & Education, Lawson Software. “These organizations turn to Lawson for our public services expertise and commitment, our flexible, comprehensive software and services and our sensible lifecycle costs. We enable cities and counties to simplify the business of government so they can focus resources on serving their communities.”
Lawson serves more than 120 public services customers, including three of the top seven digital state governments and four of the 25 largest school districts in the United States. Lawson’s software is in use at almost 3,000 schools with combined enrollments exceeding 1.75 million students and 200,000 staff members. School districts, cities, counties, state governments, publicly owned utilities and municipal districts rely on Lawson’s solutions to help meet the needs of a variety of stakeholders – students, constituents, employees, vendors and the community – while helping to maximize limited budgets.
Source: Lawson
