Cookeville Looking For Software Upgrades

Cookeville is preparing to release a request for proposals to upgrade the city’s business processes with new software.

Finance Director Brenda Imel said the request will be published on their website at the start of October so vendors can present them with different software options based on the city’s needs. Imel said one of the main things they are looking to upgrade is their human resources operations.

“We’d like to get some city-wide, consistent timekeeping and then have that timekeeping then feed into payroll,” Imel said. “And then part of HR is to have all the paperwork that you do, when you bring a new employee on board there’s a lot of paperwork that needs to be filled out, to do all that online.”

Imel said the she hopes to have an idea of how much they are looking to invest in new software by next spring so they can budget for the purchases next year. Imel said their consultant will help them go through the proposals and schedule scripted demonstrations with the best vendors.

“They will come in and show us specific things that we want to see to make sure the software can do what they say it does,” Imel said. “And then that’ll help us limit down to the top one or two.”

Imel said they will then conduct reference checks, talk to other government bodies in Tennessee about their experiences with each vendor, and may visit other users of the potential software to see it in action.

“It’s going to be a long process,” Imel said. “For software that we do have, trying to get that data out and converted into the new software and then for paper systems that we don’t have any data it’s going to be starting those from scratch. So we’re talking a good eighteen months before we get some of these modules up and going live.”

Imel said they would like to work with one vendor if possible but they may have to combine multiple kinds of software to create the best system for the city.

“Some of the things like community development, licensing, and permitting, it may be a standalone software,” Imel said. “But as long as we can get software that can integrate or talk to each other, that we can export data from one and import to the other, that would work too.”

Imel said their consultant will also send the city’s request directly to various vendors for further exposure.