AST Awarded One of the Largest Ever Cooperative Municipal ERP Projects

Nov. 26, 2012 - PRLog -- Hillsborough County and the City of Tampa have awarded Applications Software Technology Corporation (AST Corporation) of Naperville, IL a $34 million, 5-year contract for a new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) project for software, implementation, integration, training and technology hosting services.

First envisioned by County and City officials in 2009, County Commissioner Mark Sharpe called the agreement "probably one of the most important and significant events in county history” (Tampa Tribune).

The collaboration between the County and the City was a result of aging financial and human resource technologies, operated separately at both municipalities. "It's really about replacing outdated, fractured software that didn't communicate with each other," said Santiago Corrada, Chief of Staff to Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn. “By collaborating on the purchase, the City and County saved taxpayers $6.5 million. Greater savings will accrue in future years through increased efficiency” (Tampa Tribune).

"This is just a great opportunity for government to combine forces, save money and provide better services to the public," said County Commissioner Al Higginbotham (Tampa Bay Times).  "I think the level of cooperation between the City and County is at this point unprecedented," said Bob Buckhorn, City of Tampa Mayor (Tampa Bay Times).

After a yearlong process, the County/City joint selection committee chose AST and Oracle E-Business Suite as the preferred implementation partner and ERP solution. Hosting of the ERP environment will be provided by Oracle On Demand.

The project began in March 2012 with AST Corporation as the prime contractor, and includes new Oracle financial systems, human resource systems, business intelligence, and database technology.  The project is expected to take approximately 22 months to implement.