Three member cities of the governments association – Arlington, Carrollton and Grand Prairie with a view to buying and sharing the same business software, approached the North Central Texas Council of Governments (NCTCOG) in the summer of 2003 to purchase and host the new applications on their behalf and participated in the vendor selection process.
The three cities will be the first NCTCOG members to use the applications, which will focus on enhancing customer service and providing greater value to their organizations by streamlining and integrating business processes and improving data access.
The ultimate vision of the Shared Services Center is that the benefits will be extended as the service is offered to other entities, said Tim Barbee, chief information officer for the city of Arlington. The original cities gain additional economies of scale as new customers are added. And as new customers buy into the Center, they gain some of the same benefits of the original customers, including reduced implementation and ongoing costs via shared operation and maintenance costs.
Lawson Consulting Services will provide project management and implementation and training services for NCTCOG. The contract also includes Lawson’s e-Recruiting and Employee and Manager Self-Service applications, which will allow NCTCOG members to accelerate applicant pre-screening which should reduce HR staff time spent on transaction processing.
The new partnership, along with Answerthink Inc, will begin implementing the Lawson applications this month with the goal of being live on all five suites by January 2006.
