Fairfax County Water Authority (Virginia)

Challenge
In the late 1980’s, the Authority implemented the NCC COBOL IDMS/VSAM-based mainframe billing system. After 12 years of use the utility found it could no longer sufficiently upgrade the system to provide the services required by its customers, such as debit billing and on-line account access. The municipality needed to make a decision about whether to outsource or continue to operate an in-sourced solution.

Solutions
A significant increase in the customer base coupled with a renewed focus on the customer resulted in the Authority’s decision to replace the billing system. TMG was hired to assist in the selection process. This effort included development of a design blueprint including a comprehensive customer application architecture, a request for proposal, evaluation of vendor proposals, finalist confirmation, due diligence, contract negotiations, development of the installation plan, and subsequent presentations and approval.

Results
The Authority selected the SAP R/3 CCS solution implemented by IBM and operated in a hosted environment by SAP using a third party data center. The installation contracts were approved at the end of 2002 with installation activities initiated at the beginning of 2003.