Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Enterprise Software topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Middlebury council previews Boyce/BSNA cloud finance and billing system; officials raise cost and security questions
Summary
Vendors from Boyce/BSNA demonstrated a cloud municipal financial suite and resident payment portal that would centralize billing, offer real‑time payments and role‑based dashboards. Council members expressed sticker shock about implementation and training costs and asked detailed questions about cybersecurity, backups and contract timing; staff signaled a March timeline for contract discussion if the town pursues an October go‑live.
Vendors from Boyce/BSNA visited the Feb. 2 council meeting to demo a cloud‑based municipal financial and utility billing system and a resident payment portal. Parker Bright of Boyce/BSNA introduced a presentation that highlighted a single database, customizable dashboards and workspaces, global search, automated updates and a resident portal capable of one‑time and autopay transactions via card, ACH, Apple/Google Pay or text‑to‑pay. The presenters said payments post in real time to the town’s admin view and that the platform is PCI compliant and hosted in Microsoft Azure.
Why it matters: The system would replace several locally hosted modules and eliminate manual backups and nightly file migrations staff currently perform, potentially improving efficiency for billing and accounts payable. Staff noted implementation costs and recurring fees can be split among funds (general fund, water and sewer) and flagged training, implementation and data‑migration as material items to budget.
Key takeaways from the demo: Presenters walked through role‑based dashboards, saved workspaces for common tasks (for example, invoices ready for payment), an activities/notifications stream, and a resident portal that lets property owners link multiple addresses and pay multiple bills at once. Presenters estimated an implementation first‑year cost figure (presented in the transcript as about $41,035) and a training line (presented as about $28,175); they also referenced typical annual contract increases (CPI or a percentage) and said Boyce has historically used annual increases. Presenters emphasized Boyce/BSNA’s Indiana presence and familiarity with the State Board of Accounts as a differentiator from out‑of‑state vendors.
Council questions and concerns: Council members asked how major cloud outages (Microsoft/Amazon events) would affect town services; presenters said previous outages did not affect their core services and cited uptime near 99.9%. Officials also raised the risk profile of placing town operational data in vendor‑hosted cloud services and asked whether any hard offline backups would be available. Staff said the vendor backs up to Microsoft infrastructure and that any contingency plans would be part of procurement negotiations. Council discussed perceived “sticker shock” and asked for more detail and time to absorb the demo; staff suggested placing a contract discussion on the March agenda if the council wishes to pursue the change with an October implementation target.
Next steps: Staff said they will bring a contract addendum previously prepared by Jackson and could place a contract item on the next meeting agenda for further consideration; council did not vote on an award at the Feb. 2 session.
