City of Atlanta: Going In with a Bang!

When most people talk about the “Big Bang,” they are most likely referring to the origins of the universe, or an amusing and popular television show by that same name. On a less positive note, a big bang could be the sound of their 10-year-old automobile backfiring.

But in the world of cloud computing, the “big bang” is IT shorthand for a complete migration of all workloads in scope to the cloud, vs. a phased implementation over time.

The city of Atlanta switched to an all-cloud, back-office platform, making them one of Oracle’s first public sector customers to implement the full spectrum of cloud applications to improve finance, HR and procurement. They did it to eliminate costly upgrades, take advantage of the built-in integration among Oracle ERP, EPM and HCM Cloud, to improve and simplify reporting capabilities, lower the cost of ownership and to position themselves for innovation while future-proofing their back-office applications.

The decision was business-driven, according to Alfonso Pinan, director of financial systems services for the city of Atlanta. “When we took a step back and took a hard look at our own business processes, the goal was definitely digital transformation and business improvement,” Pinan said. Eliminating paper and moving to digital workflow was critical.

In just eight months since going live on Oracle Cloud in January 2019, Atlanta has reason to boast:

• 64% of invoices are scanned directly into the system instead of manually keying them in (year-end goal: 95%)
• 75% decreased time to generate the budget book, quarterly, and five-year plan
• 50% reduction in the number of payroll off-cycle checks
• 80% reduction in paper use by procurement
• Expedited process approval using mobile devices
• 100% self-service HR operations for employees

And, when the city hosted the Feb. 3 Super Bowl, the city had no problem issuing the ad hoc, off-cycle paychecks required for some 500 temporary employees required to staff the event.

A Big Bang without sound

Sometimes, a big bang can create fireworks that are not fun to watch.  A prime example is that of a government cyber-breach, a real-time, persistent threat recognized by state and local leaders. More than 170 recorded ransomware attacks against state and local governments have been reported since malware first came onto the scene in 2013, prompting the U.S. Conference of Mayors recently to pass a resolution against paying ransomware ransoms.

In May 2018, Atlanta was hit with a cyberattack, affecting utility, parking and court services.  However, Oracle cloud solutions were not impacted. “We didn’t have any repercussions at all; it was the in-house applications and databases that suffered the most,” Pinan said.

Cloud was the perfect catalyst to modernize, and the cyber-attack gave Pinan and his team a reason to go all in on cloud, instituting significant change management processes along the way.  “At the beginning of the process, most people in government didn't understand the concept of cloud and cloud security and where the data resides. The volatile term 'cloud' didn't inspire a lot of confidence. With time and through the process, that actually has been proven to be the opposite.”

And so far, the financial services team is doing a bang-up job.