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Um as you know, our our existing uh accounting system is rather outdated.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