City staff recommend IBM as system integrator for $71.9M COSA Connect upgrade

City staff on April 8 recommended the City Council consider a contract with IBM to implement SAP S/4HANA and SAP Ariba as part of phase 3 of the COSA Connect program, a $71,900,000, multi-year effort to replace the city's legacy SAP system and modernize finance and procurement functions.

The recommendation came during a presentation to the council by city staff and information-technology leaders. Craig Hopkins, the city's chief information officer, said the project is meant to be "not just a technology upgrade" but a business-led transformation to centralize data, strengthen compliance and improve transparency across budget, payroll, procurement and asset-management workflows. "This is not just a technology upgrade," Hopkins said.

Troy, the project presenter, told council staff had run a competitive solicitation and evaluation process that produced four responsive proposals; IBM scored highest after interviews and a written evaluation. Troy said staff negotiated a fixed base fee of $11,300,000 with IBM for the system-integration work, plus optional contract buckets (approximately $1,700,000) and a 10% contingency, which together produce a contract ceiling staff cited as $14,100,000 for the integrator portion. He said the overall COSA Connect program budget is roughly $71.9 million over about five years and that most other costs (software licenses, prior integrators and other contractor payments) had been approved in earlier phases.

Staff described a target cutover and go-live date of Oct. 1, 2027, and said the base contract would include three months of post-go-live "hypercare" support, with additional hourly buckets available later if unanticipated interface or year-end issues arise. Troy said IBM would partner with locally headquartered Systema Technologies (a small-business subcontractor) and with EPI/USC America for payroll expertise.

Council members pressed staff during a lengthy question-and-answer period about several recurring issues:

- Local hiring and small-business participation: Mayor Jones and others urged staff to put concrete, written plans on how the city would develop local capacity and create opportunities for small or veteran-owned firms to participate. Staff said the city would engage the Economic Workforce Development Committee (EWDC), the small business office and groups such as Supply SA and the chamber to expand supplier engagement and workforce-development pathways.

- Training and employee impact: Council members asked how city employees would be supported during the transition and whether the modernization would displace roles. Staff said an organizational change-management team and an embedded training team are in place to guide testing, training and post-go-live stabilization; Craig Hopkins said the program includes work on role-based security, data governance and a target operating model to align staffing with new processes.

- Interfaces and external systems: Council members asked whether the new finance backbone would continue to connect to external payment and permitting platforms (for example, Exela) and how the chart of accounts change would affect existing integrations. Staff said interfaces will be modified and that an additional bucket of hours in the contract would cover missed or complex interfaces.

- AI and cost metering: Hopkins and other staff differentiated embedded vendor "assistant" features from add-on AI offerings (SAP's marketed add-on called "Jewel"). They said the add-on AI will not be implemented initially because pricing/usage metering is still uncertain; the city plans to pilot AI credits on a development team to understand costs before deciding whether to expand access.

Troy asked council for support to place the negotiated IBM contract on the April 30 council agenda for formal consideration. No formal vote on the integrator contract occurred at the April 8 session. The council later met in executive session on unrelated legal and real-estate matters and reconvened, with staff reporting that no official action was taken in executive session.

What happens next: staff will continue design and discovery with the selected vendor if council places the contract on the April 30 agenda; governance will be maintained through an executive steering committee and Gartner oversight for quality assurance, staff said.

Key quoted material in this article is drawn verbatim from the council presentation and public Q&A on April 8, 2026. The council did not take a formal vote on the integrator contract during that meeting.