HITS seeks $5.95 million increase to extend UKG (Kronos) contract, add HPD Telestaff
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Summary
Houston Information Technology Services asked council for authority to increase spending on the city's UKG (Kronos) timekeeping contract by $5,950,000 to cover a five-year extension and to support HPD's planned Telestaff rollout; staff said the system will remain integrated with SAP and that departments will fund their own Telestaff licenses.
Houston Information Technology Services on Monday asked the council to approve an additional $5,950,000 in spending authority to extend the city's contract with Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG) and support a planned migration to UKG's commercial cloud and rolling out the Telestaff scheduling product to the Houston Police Department.
"It's a contract extension with UKG," said Lisa Kent, chief information officer and department director for Houston Information Technology Services. Kent told the committee the current contract has $6,200,000 in remaining spending authority and that the requested increase would bring total spending authority for fiscal years 2025 through 2030 to $12,100,000.
The contract covers software licenses for UKG workforce management, hardware and maintenance for time clocks, support and maintenance, and professional services to assist deployments. "Kronos is the citywide electronic timekeeping solution that feeds into our payroll system," Kent said, describing UKG as the system city departments use to record and transmit employee time to SAP for payroll.
"The benefits of UKG Telestaff software would be streamlined scheduling, which reduces the manual work and minimizes the errors," said Ms. Pillai, assistant director for the enterprise resource planning group. City staff said the Houston Police Department currently performs much scheduling and timekeeping on paper, producing an estimated 5,300 historical pay edits per pay period. Staff said Telestaff will be used by HPD for complex scheduling for roughly full-time officers and that several thousand additional, temporary users would access the system for special events or temporary assignments.
Council members asked about the contract's history and whether the city periodically reviews whether to continue with long-running enterprise platforms. Kent said the city implements key strategic platforms for extended periods when change would be a large cost and operational lift, and that the UKG-to-SAP integration is already in place. "The integration is already set up between Kronos UKG system and SAP today," Ms. Pillai said, adding that the planned workforce management product will be delivered as a standard, noncustomized software-as-a-service implementation.
Council members also asked about training and support during the migration. Kent said HITS and city payroll partners have identified staff to assist departments and managers during implementation. She said the Administration and Regulatory Affairs (ARA) office has already identified at least one payroll staffer to assist the rollout.
Staff said the Telestaff licenses for HPD will be paid from department funds: "HAS and HPD will pay separately for their use of Telestaff and so that comes directly out of HAS's enterprise fund and HPD's fund," Kent said. No formal vote on the spending increase was recorded in the committee transcript; staff presented the request for council approval and answered questions.
The committee did not take a formal vote during the presentation. Staff said they will return with the contract extension for council action and that departments will proceed with training and implementation planning in advance of the software migration.
