Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Erp Implementation topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Fort Myers officials say Oracle ERP rollout is 'challenging'; city working case-by-case to fix payroll errors
Summary
City manager and IT director told council the Oracle ERP rollout delivered core financials and payroll but has produced payroll calculation issues tied to union contracts and overtime rules; staff say fixes are handled case-by-case and utility billing migration remains pending.
City Manager Marty Lawing and IT Director Richard Calkins briefed the Fort Myers City Council on June 15 about progress and problems in the city’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation, which replaced the Tyler EDEN system with Oracle and an implementer identified as Creel SMX.
Lawing said finance and budgeting went live Oct. 1 and payroll moved to the new system on Jan. 1. Calkins said core systems are in a stabilization and optimization phase; staff have submitted roughly 215 support tickets to the implementer and vendor support. He described payroll as “one of the most complex” systems the city operates because about 1,100 employees work under four different union contracts, multiple shifts, overtime rules and special pay items such as take-home vehicles and K-9 assignments.
Councilmembers pressed whether problems are the vendor’s fault or the implementer’s. Calkins said the city selected the implementer through RFP and that Oracle’s out-of-the-box calculations operate as configured; when the city wanted legacy calculations duplicated, it paid for change requests to implement those rules. He added the city has run “quick pay” corrections and case-by-case payroll reruns to make employees whole when errors were found.
Councilmembers urged better employee communication and oversight; staff acknowledged that some payrolls have required retroactive corrections and said priority is ensuring employees are not underpaid and that pensions and benefit calculations are accurate. The city plans to continue stabilization work, finalize remaining modules (utility billing is still on Tyler), and issue an RFP for utility-billing replacement before the Tyler vendor stops supporting that module by March 2027.
What happens next: staff said they will continue optimization, run targeted quick-pay corrections when necessary, and develop a public RFP for a replacement utility-billing system. Employees with payroll problems are instructed to submit detailed cases via oraclesupport@fortmyers.gov.
