Chickasha council approves sole‑source agreement to move city ERP to cloud; full upgrade may take two years

The Chickasha City Council approved a sole‑source procurement with Tyler Technologies Inc. to modernize the city's enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, move parts of the system to the cloud and add a mobile service‑orders module intended to improve utility and field operations.

City staff member Rich told the council the work is presented in three parts: a small mobile service‑orders module (described in the meeting as roughly a $1,000 cost with a $250 one‑time fee and a $500 recurring component), a migration to Tyler's cloud service that opens access to additional modules, and a future upgrade path to Tyler ERP 10. "Moving to the cloud allows us to access some additional modules ... and also frees up a server that can be repurposed," Rich said.

Rich said approving the procurement puts the city "in line" for ERP 10 but that the vendor's upgrade scheduling means the city could wait about a year to start implementation and then expect a 9‑ to 12‑month implementation window — putting a realistic timeline of roughly two years before ERP 10 would be fully in place.

Councilors asked about staffing and whether modernization would reduce the need to add finance staff. Rich said the modernization is likely to produce cost avoidance rather than immediate cost savings, allowing existing finance staff to work more efficiently and reducing the need to add additional permanent finance personnel in the near term. He added that the city would not owe implementation payments until the system is moved into implementation.

The council approved the sole‑source procurement as presented and authorized the mayor to execute documentation. The motion followed a brief discussion about expected benefits, recurring costs of certain modules and procurement sequencing; the meeting did not include a detailed, line‑item total for the full multi‑year cost of the overall ERP transition.