Welcome to the Carmel Finance Utilities and Rules Committee meeting agenda for Monday, July 6, 2026.

We will call the meeting to order at 4.32 p.m.

We have three items on the agenda for this meeting.

Ordinance D-28, 29-26.

It amends Article 4, Section 2-131 of the Carmel City Code to establish a non-reverting ERP implementation fund, fund number 928.

These are all related resolution CC 061526-03.

It transfers $2 million from the general fund number 101 into the ERP implementation fund, fund number 929.

And the third item is the first reading ordinary ordinance D-2831-26, an ordinance of the Common Council.

This ordinance appropriates $2 million to support the ERP implementation costs.

We will turn it over to CF CFO, City CFO Zach Jackson.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman and members of the finance committee.

As you mentioned, I have uh three items on your agenda uh this afternoon.

I'm joined today by uh Tom Helt.

Uh Tom's uh vice president uh for government at work day.

I'll do a better introduction for him in just a moment.

Um as you know, our our existing uh accounting system is rather outdated.

Um it was originally installed in 1994, uh which predates DVDs, the iPhone, social media, the creation of Google, the OJ Simpson trial, and perhaps most importantly, the debate of whether or not Ross and Rachel were on or break.

That was for you.

I thank you, Ron.

Yeah, thanks.

Um I'm asking City Council to appropriate two million to cover the cost for implementing workday, a cloud-based ERP system that unifies uh finance, HR, and planning across our enterprise.

As I presented at the last meeting, the annual licensing cost for workday will be approximately 30,000 more than our annual than what we annually pay today for our existing licenses for Central Square, ADP, and other small accounting systems used by Parks Department, Utilities Department, Brookshire, and the Carmel Bond Bank.

All of those currently have a different uh accounting system.

This transition will drive efficiencies by replacing manual and paper processes with smoother workflows.

It will connect data across our payroll, finance, and HR platforms.

Uh as I mentioned, I'm joined by Tom, uh Carmel resident, who's vice president for workday uh in the government space.

Uh Tom, since since uh Carmel is the city of champions, I also want to mention that uh Tom is Jack Helt's father.

Jack was uh 2019 Carmel High School graduate who went on to win an NCAA wrestling championship in 2023.

Uh at this, I'd like to point I'd like to turn over to Tom.

Uh we've got a few slides for you about the the workday system.

Thank you, Zach, and appreciate the shout out on behalf of my son, very very proud father.

Um, and thank you, Mr.

Chairman and committee members for uh having me here today.

Um, if you'll permit me a brief personal aside, the last time I was formally in this room was probably about 15 years ago when my wife and I had erected a basketball goal in our cul-de-sac, which was seen as a possible easement problem, to which Mayor Brainerd assured everyone we are a city that loves to have kids playing in our cul-de-sac, and we're gonna let this one go.

So that goal still remains, and kids in the neighborhood still play on it, even though kids like my son are now grown and having children of their own.

So I appreciate the opportunity to be back.

And um I've spent uh my career in the ERP industry, so for the last 30 years, um, uh, both as an implementer and as a provider of the service.

Um worked everywhere from Hawaii to New Hampshire and from Minnesota down to Florida, so it's it's fun for me to be able to provide my expertise to my to my hometown here.

Um, as Zach mentioned, you have in front of you a presentation that I'm gonna go through.

So this first slide, um, a lot of words on it, but it really does summarize you know what this initiative, the project cornerstone is all about for the city.

I think Zach and his team have done an excellent job kind of describing some of these priorities that you'll see, uh which he also just summarized, you know, you know, modernizing some outdated systems, really helping increase operational efficiencies here.

I I it's been fun for me to see all of the talent that Carmel has brought in to you know manage you know the operations here of Zach and his staff, and um, you know, they're there to watch them operate with maybe an arm tied behind their back and to be part of what can maybe unlock some of those efficiencies is really exciting.

Um, and really wanted to spend five more minutes just kind of talking about the value of workday.

Um, some of it's highlighted here again.

We we help a lot of uh public sector organizations and commercial enterprises, uh which I'll highlight um at the end of this presentation.

Some of it's highlighted here again we we help a lot of public sector organizations and commercial enterprises which I'll highlight um at the end of this presentation really do exactly what you all are trying to do is is drive drive informed decisions right I I got to watch firsthand as I watched you know the the uh the the council members kind of wrestle with last year's budget and and watch finance try to get you the information that you needed to make the right decisions for the city and you know as a as a constituent I'm excited to see the the rigor that you all put into that and I think um workday is the kind of system that will help uh better facilitate uh those processes if you go to the next slide uh this really just kind of highlights some of the you know some of the challenges and if we really kind of look at you know from from right to left those three items really highlight what this is all about right the efficiency as I mentioned improving transparency and then again reducing risk you know some of the systems you all are operating on are very old that could be uh prone to you know security risks and things of that nature um and workday is a is a hardened solution um that's been around for for 20 years um workday was was was born as a cloud solution um you know Zach mentioned the dawn of the iPhone right we were we were invented at kind of the same time as the iPhone when all these cloud applications really started popping up and workday was a forerunner to these ERP systems being in the cloud so they could be more secure um they could be more user friendly you could have mobile uh accessibility to them you know some of the things that are highlighted is the you know how we help you'll kind of see up there um automation of process right you know there's a lot of manual intervention that has to happen with some of these legacy systems uh another big one up there is just one source of truth right connecting all of your applications under under one umbrella um I think will be very uh valuable to the to the staff here um so I think I think some of those things are are are what really sets us apart um is the fact that if you look at what workdays you know focuses as a software company this is what we do we're an ERP company we don't sell data centers we don't you know we don't uh you know sell hardware to people all we do is produce this software that we host for our customers and and help to deliver these outcomes that Zach and his team are are seeking the next slide kind of gets into a little bit of the some analysis that we did with with Zach and his team you know kudos to them they did a tremendous amount of due diligence you know we we spent hours and hours demonstrating our software to them and one of the final exercises we went through is something that we do with all of our customers and the the simple way to read this slide is where you see those W's that that's this is a self-run survey that we provide to our customers and we ask them before they implement our product to rate their you know their current experience with all of these different financial processes and then after they go live with our software we ask them to do it again.

So we don't have any we don't put our thumb on the scale we don't have any any say into their feedback.

So the all those W's represent where our average custom our customers average out the the benefits that they've seen from the system and how they feel like they operate and as you can see many of them feel like with our solution they operate at an advanced level the the the carrots on the left are what the City of Carmel team Zach and his staff rated the way they're able to operate today.

So we'll come back again and do this same study with them a year from now and I think yeah you know I I think you can trust that we'll see the the the needle move to the right so this this really just put a put a picture to the gap that that um you know they they feel as uh you know compared to maybe our our average customer the next slide you'll see HR you know you all run a solution today called ADP it's a little bit better right it is a it is a package software other organizations use it it's just not connected to your finance system and there's still some things that they're not able to unlock from that solution so on the whole both the finance and the HR team I think are are seeing a lot of value in combining these these solutions together to uh to drive the benefits that that that um Zach and team are seeking from from this from this project.

Just a couple more slides one that really just paints a picture I think this is the simplest picture to say what we're trying to accomplish with this project the team today is spending an inordinate amount of time doing transactional work I would really say not using the full capacity of their brains or what they're hired to do.

They're busy doing manual work that takes a lot of time away from the more strategic things.

If they have the information their fingertips just like you know just like the the council you can make better decisions.

And so that's we're trying to kind of flip the script on the way things operate today and I think this this paints a good picture of it.

And then my last two slides are just some evidence right what why you know what makes workday so special from someone else's point of view.

Gardner is a leading independent technology research firm.

They put out what they call these magic quadrants on any number of services that that software and technology companies provide this one was particularly focused on cloud-based ERP solutions for local government.

So you can see we're rated in the top right quadrant there as a as a kind of a solution of choice for for government organizations.

So we're really proud of that because again, we can boast about ourselves all we want.

We you know, I obviously have a have a biased opinion, um, but we're really proud of the kind of the accolades that we get uh from outside uh outside our industry.

I'll just add on excuse me, I'll just add on this one.

Our our current uh we we refer to it often as pentamation, uh but but Central Square is another name of our existing system, and you can see where that one falls in these quadrants.

So we're moving up and to the right.

Uh and then final the final slide is um again just to show you that you're you're not alone, you're not alone here in Indiana, you're not alone here in your industry.

Um, you know, we we work for some of the and and you're you know the same solution that you all will use.

Again, we are a multi-tenant cloud-based solution.

All of our customers are on the same version of the software.

When you hire someone, you're going through the same process that Netflix goes through when they hire someone that Visa goes through, that Hamilton County goes through, that DePaw University goes through.

So and then we've seen tremendous growth in in government in the last 10 years.

Again, we've been around since 2005, but really as as government kind of started to adopt cloud uh as it can be a laggard at times in in technology, uh, we've seen tremendous growth.

Um we we probably have one cut one public sector customer going live on our software every week for the last couple years and and it for this foreseeable future.

And again, since the you know Carmel Utilities is part of this as well, we also do tremendously well in the utility space and specifically with with water districts.

So just to again provide some some visibility to you know others out there, you're joining good company, um, you know, you're not alone.

We you we have to keep the system not up just up and running for you but up and running for organizations throughout the globe.

So again, on a on a selfish note, I'm I'm excited to be here.

I'm excited to see what our what our city is doing to modernize again.

Certainly have a selfish vested interest, uh, but just proud to be able to be a part of uh the innovation that's happening.

So thank you.

Thank you for the presentation.

I know we asked uh uh a number of these qu a lot of questions at last finance committee meeting, and the council chose to um send it back specifically related to the ordinance establishing the non-reverting ERP implementation fund, and a lot of those um council members were able to ask those questions during that meeting.

I didn't receive any questions uh to be asked from fellow counselors who are not on the committee and seeing no others here today.

Is there any uh questions from the committee?

Just Councilman Ar.

Thank you.

Thank you for that presentation.

It was great.

Um I think I asked Zach this question, and it was kind of a joke, but not kind of a joke.

But I'm wondering if the analytics within this workday program could show the efficiencies.

Do you have a do you have a module that actually tracks efficiencies for from when you implement when you start your implementation to the launch?

Do you have like a module that shows the efficiencies that will happen?

We do have the ability to find opportunities for improvement in in our business processes themselves.

So as you use our software, some of our artificial intelligence technology will look at where there are inefficiencies in the process, inefficiencies how and in how you are using the the solution.

A lot of the kind of the before and after though, kind of has to be measured kind of by the city themselves or or with our help, right?

To to just kind of we've established a little bit of a baseline of kind of you know the effectiveness today.

Um but there are some different tools that we can use to help you constantly kind of improve to you know, once you've established a new baseline to continue to evolve.

And that I think that's part of the part of the issue with some legacy software sometimes is it just does it doesn't it's not able to evolve with with the with the organization as it as we continue to grow as a city and and continue to evolve as a city.

So yeah, there is some of that.

Uh there's some of that capability in our solution.

I think just just from a you know a taxpayer myself, what are we getting for our what are we getting for our dollars?

Yeah, and is it really helping our bottom line?

That is really truly what the question is.

And efficiencies are always what we're looking for.

And I like the idea of having for budget season, not using animation.

Very we won't be able to use it this year, but next year hopefully we'll be able to do that.

So I'm looking forward to it.

Yeah, we did go through an exercise where we did capture how much time the team is spending on various tasks and their various activities to kind of come at kind of that return on investment.

And we we project somewhere in the three to four year time frame.

Again, Zach had already highlighted that the net difference you're going to be paying in software is you know, somewhat minimal, but then there's the investment that you're making on the implementation, that two million dollar deployment.

So when is that going to be recovered?

And we we project in the three to four year time frame the efficiencies that will be gained.

But so now that we've kind of established how much time activities are taking the team today, when we go through that next exercise, we can kind of measure that.

So it's not our software so much that'll measure it, but we've got the data to help you all again.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Councilman.

Um quick follow-up to that.

So thank you.

I appreciate that.

The other question I have for you is I've I've seen some ERP implementations, and some are great, some are horrible, to say the least.

And I'm wondering, just out of curiosity, um specifically once we're in once the implementation has happened and we see that we may possibly need more modules, maybe in two or three years.

Are those additional fees that we would incur as a city?

I'm assuming that they are, correct?

They would be, yeah.

If there's additional functionality that you're not using and you wanted to adopt it, uh that would be that would be additional.

And then if and if if we're using a module that is not working, is it part of the total cost of the licensing fees?

Does that make sense?

Yep.

Is it something we can pull out and not pay for, or is it just as a whole?

We find a way to work with you to make it as net neutral as possible, right?

Because there's all you're again, as you're evolving, you're maybe seeing value in one thing than the other.

We don't see a lot of people, quote unquote, wanting to stop using something.

Um, but where that situation arises, we we work with you to make sure it's as net neutral as possible.

Appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

Uh we'll send it over to counselor uh worrell, but I did want to say uh particularly industries where you can code hours to a job, that's and which would include some of these modules, that's probably where you can really track the efficiencies, right?

And I'm assuming many of our departments don't code hourly or time to uh job or or job cost number.

Yeah, uh streets department and utilities department use um what's our asset?

City works or city.

So thank you.

Yeah, so they use CityWorks.

Um and I would say I think that gives them perhaps more of a proxy than the real number.

I think they're able to code their hours, but then what okay, it's two hours, but what do you multiply that by?

I don't think they're able to say, well, this person makes exactly this much plus this specialty play pay plus these benefits.

So it'd make that a more informed calculation.

But again, that's only two departments using that today.

Council Royal.

Let's see.

Thank you, Mr.

Chairman.

Appreciate it.

Um thank you for being here today.

Uh really appreciate that, and congratulations on your son and his success in wrestling.

Where did he go to college?

Wabash College.

Awesome.

Very good.

Yeah, yeah.

But we we figured out a way to make it work.

Yeah.

Uh so um, you know, it's really exciting for our employees to enter into you know new software, a different view on your job when you come to work.

I know it's gonna be stressful.

I'm curious, um, has the team met the personnel from workday that will be working with them on implementation.

I'm uh I know you're the government affairs, so you're our contact, but is there gonna be boots on the streets, personnel here on a daily basis?

How will that what will that look like and how does that work?

There will be, and they they have met some of them, they've met kind of our senior leadership team, um, and they've also been on some calls lately.

We've been reviewing our statement of work that describes the activities that we're gonna perform together and and and with the city, and they've met several of the team members that are gonna be involved in the project.

Yes.

Okay, and will there be people actually here?

There will be.

Again, it's an ebb and flow of you know, we always want to balance those because some of those travel costs can be additive, and we want to balance out how much we do remote versus on site, but it's always best to be you know working together at different milestones of the project in person together.

So yeah, though there will definitely be some people that are that are boots on the ground here at certain pivotal moments, like certainly when we begin planning, when we're designing some things, when we're testing, when we're deploying, certainly when we're rolling it out, we'll have a team of people here to support uh live and in person.

Okay, good, great, thank you.

Um and then I mean I love this chart that you gave us, uh, but I did want to ask a couple of questions.

So I'm I'm looking at uh whatever the Gantt or whatever that is.

Um, you know, I'm looking at some of the items where we're currently not where we want to be as far as the level of service.

So what and and I didn't want to make any assumptions.

I could make an assumption that I think I know what this is, but I'm not gonna do that.

Self-service.

What it does that mean under theme?

An example would be instead of calling HR and saying, you know, uh asking a question about uh, you know, hey, can I get a copy of my I lost my copy of my of my paycheck or whatever, you know, you they can just go online and view it themselves, right?

Or what are my benefit options?

Well, again, you you could use self-service to go online and do that, some of those activities yourself.

So it's really kind of enabling certain um employees to be self um uh self-accountable if they if they'd like to be.

Okay.

So and I don't want to nitpick this, but I'm I just like this kind of stuff, so I apologize.

But so I I kind of was thinking that might be the case under H or Yeah, well, um excuse me, under HR, where we have that ability, you know, ADP or whatever, but there's this theme over on the first one that's very low, and I was just wondering what's the difference then between those two self-services.

Um the the one in finance is probably related to um users kind of in conjunction with that reporting and analytics, just uh there the ability for like for instance for Zach and his team to get reporting information without having to call IT and to create a report for them.

Okay, so being able to kind of function a little independent of additional assistance.

Yeah, okay, great.

All right, yeah, yeah.

So we're gonna be a little bit more self-sufficient in each department as well as our employees.

Yep.

And I think that's a great thing.

So uh and then I also want to thank Zach and his team for great management of this, and you know, hopefully hopefully I'm optimistic picking the right vendor.

Um and the fact that it's a caramel, a caramel resident represents them as icing on the cake.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Counselor Green.

Yep.

Thanks.

Um like Chris was saying, um most of the questions are already been answered.

So I remember I didn't see it here, but we saw it last time that breakdown of the fees, you know, and how all right.

So right now we're not cloud-based, you know.

Um it goes solution, it will go solution by solution, but yeah, generally generally, yeah.

ADP is cloud-based.

Uh, I don't believe our accounting system is would be considered cloud-based.

Right.

So instead of having multiple, you know, like we saw when we saw the the breakdown of the fees, we're gonna be taking kind of the multiple solutions that we use today.

Some are more secure because they're in the cloud, some aren't consolidating everything in work day.

So that's kind of the summary of this whole project.

Now, how are we going to implement it?

I think you explained it before.

Is it gonna be kind of piece by piece, solution by solution?

We're gonna you know, phase off ADP, move that to the cloud, cloud, and then boom, move to the I assume it's in the statement of word.

It is, yeah.

So essentially we have uh kind of two timelines uh uh for the different modules, but both of them currently going live uh different dates, but only a couple weeks apart, kind of the April to May time frame of of next year.

Uh we did have some concerns.

Uh we've been getting some um confusing indications from from ADP about when they're going to force some changes on their customers and just trying to make sure, okay, we don't want to do this twice.

We don't want to uh go to a different version of ADP just then turn around to go to work day.

Can can we push off whatever migration ADP is forcing us to after we already go live with with work day so that we don't have to do that other transition with ADP.

And I think we're now at a comfort level that we don't have to make changes to ADP prior to the transition to to work day.

Uh but again, we'd be looking going live everything.

Um I'll say end of uh end of spring, early, early summer next year, and we've got some uh you know uh we we've got some cushion built in there from the standpoint of um to me I I've I've absolutely failed if we're not ready to go by January 1st, the the following year, and we've got plenty of time there to get things right if we get installed in any area.

Okay.

And in the procurement piece, that's contract management, that is that the whole thing.

Um the procurement piece uh no, this is uh do you want to describe kind of the purchasing module?

Yeah, so procurement expenses, so so purchases, so requisitions, purchases.

I think right now it's it's done somewhat disparate, which which I think it still will be to a degree, but they're not you're not maybe leveraging your full buying power because there's not centralized purchase order process here.

You all did implement another solution for your for some so for your sourcing, which is like your bids and things of that nature.

I think you you implemented a product that we partner with sometimes.

Um so that's why you see that one's a little further.

It's a merging, right?

Because you've you've implemented a product recently, and so I think that's why the procurement team kind of labeled that one.

Hey, we're getting there here.

But in some of these other, I mean the procurement and expense that's just some of the some blocking and tackling, just like ordering ordering pencils, cones, traffic vests, like what any number of things that you may be procuring on a regular basis.

I'll just add um our our procurement system, if you can even call it that today, does not speak to our accounting system, and so somebody at a department manually uh they are entering in the the information uh into a form that functionally just prints out a piece of paper that gets walked over to the accounting department to finance department, where then somebody in my office then re-keys that same information into the accounting system.

That alone is probably one of the biggest deficiencies we're going to realize is no more duplicate entry.

You you enter it once here, it automatically flows over to the next uh step in the process.

Uh in terms of sourcing as as Tom was mentioning, um open gov.

Yeah, it's who we we introduced a year or two ago uh for the for the kind of displaying uh put pushing those procurements out.

In terms of contract management, I would say you you asked about things down the road.

Uh that's probably one of the things down the road is a contract life cycle management system.

We did get a demo from uh work day.

Uh they do have a module in this space.

We just weren't ready to kind of it was the first one that we demoed.

That's as much as my department is involved in contracts, it's really more of uh the corporation council.

They weren't there yet, and so you know, maybe a year from now we come back and and and talk about a solution there as well.

But that's something work they could potentially do.

Yes, okay.

All right.

That's it.

Thanks, Ridge.

Councilor Minor.

Now, this is a very selfish question.

Is there going to be training for the counselors on how to use some of these tools?

Absolutely.

We thank you.

Training is part of one of the components here, and and personally, uh Kirsten and I will make sure that you guys know how to use this.

Additional questions.

And just to clarify, large large procurement is going through Govin, centralized purchasing for supplies, some of those things that don't do not have some of the um Indiana code requirements and and the ways that you procure them will all be centralized.

Correct.

Yep, that'll be very helpful.

You wonder how many different departments are buying toilet paper for their building from different vendors and so forth, right?

Well, they have different toilet paper.

They they they never collaborated when they put in the dispensers in the first place, so we're buying, yeah.

That's the other thing eventually as we go through the capital asset planning, is uh fixtures, all those different things that could be you know um standardized.

The county's done a great job at that.

Um everything from the type of um uh faucets they use, right?

And so when a part goes out or whatever, sometimes they have a certain amount of parts on hand, they don't have to hire a plumber to come fix it, you know, those different things, right?

Thank you.

Uh no further questions.

Um we have three um items on our agenda today.

Is there um is there any uh motion for ordinance D 28 29 26?

Sure.

Uh I move to send it back with a positive recommendation to the full council.

Second back.

We have a motion by counselor green, a second by councilor Minor.

Please vote.

Motion carries is sent back with a positive recommendation.

Item B resolution C C 06 15 26 03.

So your motion move to approve.

Or send it back to city council with a positive recommendation.

Second.

Motion by counselor Minor, second by counselor well, please vote.

Now last item, first reading, uh motion carries.

Uh last item, uh first reading ordinance D 2831 26.

I move to uh send back to council with positive recommendation, ordinance D 2831 26.

Second.

We have a motion by council royal, second by counselor green.

Please vote.

Motion carries.

thank you thank you