Dallas County officials criticize $32 million Oracle rollout and PPM integration problems

Dallas County Commissioners on May 6 took aim at the county’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation, saying the Oracle system paid for over several years has not delivered the promised project and finance functionality and that staff are still relying on spreadsheets to manage capital projects.

At the meeting Judge Clay Jenkins and multiple commissioners said the county has spent roughly $32 million over four years on Oracle Fusion and the project‑portfolio management (PPM) module but that key reporting and integration problems remain. “We paid Oracle $32,000,000 and I’m doing the same spreadsheet work I used to do before we brought the system online,” the judge told the court, calling for clearer accountability and a fix from the vendor and the county’s implementation team.

Lester Lewis, director of the ERP Transformation Office, and county staff explained the problem is partly rooted in how the general ledger and project subledger were implemented: PPM was never fully connected to the GL in the manner recommended during procurement and early setup, Lewis said. He told the court that some groups continued to work in the county’s older EBS system after the go‑live, which delayed project entries being loaded into PPM. As a result, users lacked the project data they expected and reverted to local spreadsheets to track time and project costs.

County staff said project entries for road and bridge and other departments are being entered this week and that once the project listings are complete, the PPM reports will reflect GL activity. Lewis and another county official said the PPM module is intended to act as a subledger: it is designed to “burn down” budgets at the project level while the GL holds the official accounting records. Timekeeping for field crews, they explained, is unlikely to be fully automated because employees often work on multiple projects in a single day and time allocation will require some administrative adjustment.

Commissioners compared Oracle with alternative systems, including Workday, and questioned the county’s choice and the project’s governance and implementation approach. County officials acknowledged that some of the initial configuration decisions were incorrect and said the vendor and county teams are working to correct them. The county’s ERP director said the outstanding issues primarily stem from missing project entries and inter‑module setup rather than an inherent impossibility of the software’s functionality.

Why it matters: The ERP was sold as a modernization to centralize finance and project management. Persistent problems mean staff still spend time on manual reconciliation, hampering transparency and raising questions about value for money on a multi‑million dollar investment.

What’s next: County staff said project entries will be completed this week and that they will present additional status reports and proposed remediation steps to the court and to continuous improvement staff so the commissioners can track progress.