Solutions Representative Success Case Studies		Riverside County Office of Education CASE STUDY: PUBLIC SECTOR FINANCIAL E-COMMERCE SUITE Ink2Web in partnership with Optimus Consulting Group, and CoyoteWorks Technologies has created a user-defined, Web-based funds accounting and personnel system. This system has been selected as the turnkey Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution for the Riverside County Office of Education (RCOE) in Riverside, California. RCOE is an intermediate educational agency that acts as a "service bureau" responsible for providing mission-critical, day-to-day fiscal and personnel operations and tracking for 26 districts in the county with aggregate budgets exceeding $2 billion. More than 1,500 users from RCOE and member districts will use the Funds Accounting System (FAS) to administer federal, state and local fiscal and legal requirements and educational goals across the County's K-12 and Community College districts, including over 300,000 students in 285 schools, operated by over 40,000 educators and staff members. With many of its schools districts growing between four and ten percent annually, Riverside County is one of the fastest growing regions of California. This rapid growth placed a heavy burden on the RCOE's integrated legacy financial and personnel system which ran payroll five times a month for 40,000 employees, generated hundreds of paper reports involving mission-critical financial and personnel data and provided links to external agencies such as the County Treasurer, IRS, and the California State retirement system and tax board. SilverStream Integration Ink2Web, CoyoteWorks, Optimus and RCOE completed an in-depth systems review and analysis to determine business and technical requirements for a new system. From this review and analysis they agreed that the best course of action for RCOE was to develop a user defined, Web-based system. Based on implementation experience in Web-based systems architecture utilizing Oracle, Netscape, SilverStream and other Web application servers, Optimus, Ink2Web and RCOE selected the SilverStream Application Server because of its superior development and deployment environment, scalability, content management, and fault tolerance capability. SilverStream was also chosen because of its proven ability to access data from multiple data sources and to facilitate connections with external agencies. This was a critical RCOE requirement since the new system would have to access data from multiple databases and interface with an existing Purchasing System. The system would also be required to facilitate and ensure the accurate and timely transfer of data between the new system and the County Treasurer, Federal and State tax agencies, the California State retirement systems, the State Commission on Teaching Credentials, and Bank of America, which is the clearinghouse for RCOE's payroll. The Approach By following the ARC™ Methodology, the project team established a performance-based approach to system development, focusing on the County's and District's business processes, architecture, data, technology, and organizational objectives. Best practices identified by the California Association of School Business Officials (CASBO) and the Financial Management Accounting Committee (FMAC) forums were also incorporated into the development effort to ensure that Federal, State, and user requirements were addressed. The Funds Accounting System (FAS) will have a tremendous impact on RCOE's ability to provide critical financial information to its users. Information, previously available only in monthly manually produced reports, will now be accessible at any time regardless of location. Users will be able to request reports on an "as needed" basis using the Intranet. Because the architecture of FAS is based on a high transaction workflow system with SilverStream Web integration, it will be much easier for school districts to track and analyze up-to-the-minute expenditures. This will dramatically improve the users' ability to make informed and timely financial decisions. If Federal or State legal requirements or local educational goals change, modifications to the FAS can be made in just a few days, instead of two to eight weeks as previously required. "With a County spanning 7,200 square miles and over 400 education-related sites, being able to get the word out when business requirements change will be quicker and easier when it is done via a Web-based application," stated David Steinberg, RCOE Project Director for Systems Development. "Our responsiveness will skyrocket." The new system will also comply with California's new Standardized Account Code Structure (SACS) because SACS requirements were an integral factor during the systems definition phase of the new FAS. Interfaces to other applications and external agencies, such as the County Treasurer and the Commission on Teaching Credentials, are also being incorporated that will optimize data transfer and reduce the error prone process of exchanging data. In addition, Actuate, an enterprise-reporting tool, will be integrated into the FAS to provide Web-based enterprise reporting to system users across the county. The Solution According to Dr. William Marshall, RCOE Assistant Superintendent of Business and Administrative Services: "The FAS will significantly increase RCOE's ability to do what it does best - facilitate education. Total cost of ownership will be dramatically reduced since the new FAS will require minimum staff, and ongoing hardware maintenance and software licensing costs will be significantly reduced, thus enabling RCOE to dedicate a greater portion of its assets to the educational needs of its districts."