The City of Tampa Soars to the Cloud: A preview of Tampa’s success story at CloudWorld

Over the last 15 years, the Tampa Bay area experienced substantial population and infrastructure growth, but the city government’s IT systems were still running on legacy technologies, and it had grown inefficient and increasingly problematic. After a decade of sharing core technology with the Hillsborough County, the City of Tampa (Tampa) moved from an Oracle on-premises solution to Oracle Cloud by utilizing Oracle Consulting as their strategic implementation partner for migration and utilizing the Oracle Soar process. Now with Oracle Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Oracle Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM), Tampa explains why they selected Oracle Cloud and Oracle Consulting to fill their needs for today and tomorrow.

“For Tampa, moving into the SaaS environment, Oracle Fusion, having somebody else handle those upgrades, having those upgrades happen automatically, having the additional security that comes with having a full SaaS operation. These are really big drivers for us to get onto the new system” says Russell Haupert, CIO, CTO, and Director of Technology and Innovation for Tampa. By moving to Oracle Cloud, Tampa is now able to automate tasks and ensure top of the line security while setting themselves up for success for the short- and long-term future.  “Anytime a city's looking at making a significant investment into just keeping what they have going, they really owe it to themselves to look at what the future should bring in. What kind of software we should be looking at that will take us into the next 5, 10 years? And I think that's what we were trying to do” says Haupert.

Tampa partnered with Oracle Consulting to ensure a smooth implementation.  “The Soar process worked exactly the way Oracle said that it would work. From our standpoint, we were on time, we were on budget, and we got the functionality we wanted. So, end to end, it was the kind of implementation you rarely experience, but always hope for” said Haupert. As part of the implementation, the teams had regular cadences to ensure alignment and make quick business decisions. “The key was to discuss challenges and come to agreement really quickly and stay on schedule" says Cheryl Barnard, Oracle Consulting Practice Director. With Soar, both teams were focused on a shared goal and program vision allowing migration and implementation from E-Business Suite to Oracle Cloud Applications in 10 months.

Following Oracle Consulting’s Soar methodology, Tampa went live on Oracle Cloud ERP and HCM on time reducing implementation costs by as much as 30%. Now with their new solution, Tampa will be able to manage their workforce with:

• Automated updates such as software patches and new feature enhancements
• A complete view of workforce and financial data for Tampa’s city government officials
• An improved procurement processes for easily creating new inventory locations and validating addresses
• Streamlined and digitized previously manual HR processes

By understanding their current challenges and looking at the future business landscape, the Oracle Cloud ERP and HCM cloud applications position Tampa to embrace change and take on any upcoming challenges to achieve success.  

Russell Haupert, CIO, CTO, and Director of Technology and Innovation for City of Tampa will be speaking at two different sessions at the upcoming Oracle CloudWorld Conference.

• How City of Tampa Moved Back-Office Operations to the Cloud in 10 Months [LRN4401]:  Wednesday, October 19 - 11:30 am - 12:15 pm
• How we help get you to the cloud to thrive with SaaS [CHT4663]: Wednesday, October 19 - 3:40 pm - 4:00 pm

For more information or to register, see CloudWorld: Connect. Learn. Succeed. October 17–20, 2022 in Las Vegas.