Customer Stories > Case Study 6 | Vadim a Foundational Piece in the Creation of Two New Regional Districts

Vadim a Foundational Piece in the Creation of Two New Regional Districts

As anyone in the local government knows, creating a new Regional District – let alone two Regional Districts – is no quick or easy feat.

THE SITUATION

A provincial government restructuring of the Comox Strathcona Regional District in February 2008 resulted in the creation of the Strathcona Regional District (Strathcona RD) and the Comox Valley Regional District (Comox Valley RD). This was the first known time in provincial history for a split such as this to happen.

For two and a half years, although the two new regional districts were in different physical offices as separate entities with their own databases, their financial systems were run on one platform located at the Comox Valley RD office in Courtenay until the Strathcona RD was up and running on their own Vadim system in their new Campbell River office.


Strathcona Regional District
Dawn Christenson joined the Strathcona RD on January 1, 2010 as Financial Services Manager. Upon arrival, her immediate task was to repatriate the financial system’s database. That April, a senior accountant was hired and in June two additional financial services staff came on board.

For most of 2009 and for the first 6 months of 2010, the Strathcona RD remotely connected to their database at the Comox Valley RD office to process cash receipting and access budgeting.

“Our goal in the first six months of 2010 was to put the infrastructure, people and Vadim system in place in order for the Strathcona RD to become a fully self-sufficient financial operation,” states Dawn.


Comox Valley Regional District
Beth Dunlop, Corporate Financial Officer at the Comox Valley RD has worked there and at the previous Comox Strathcona Regional District for 10 years. During this transition, the Comox Valley RD, deemed the successor organization by the province, was in charge of putting financial systems in place for the new regional districts that included setting up banking arrangements, government registrations and, of course, creating the new databases.

“It was our responsibility to separate the records and allocate the assets and liabilities of the former Comox Strathcona Regional District between the two new regional districts,” says Beth. “We continued providing financial administration services for Strathcona RD until they were up and running on Vadim in July 2010.”

THE CHALLENGE

“In a brand new office, we had to determine roles and responsibilities, get people trained, understand past practices, and come up with the best way to move forward in a new environment,” explains Dawn. “There were non-Vadim related items that had to be sorted out and no matter how much planning and research you do there are some things you don’t know about until you are actually going through the process.”

For Beth, one of the complicated aspects of the transition was the technical aspect of creating two new databases from the previous Comox Strathcona Regional District. In a regional district setting, all services are kept separate according to legislation and it was a matter of assigning which services belonged in which new database.

THE RESULT

As a finance team, the Strathcona RD developed their own processes by establishing what works for them and what they should do differently in order to provide correct and consistent results. They considered all their options related to database server location and decided to go with a fibre optic connection to available server capacity through an offsite data service provider.

“This was the easiest financial system implementation project I’ve ever done, and this was my third,” says Dawn. She also shares that one of the most critical parts of the project’s success was mapping out the Vadim implementation plan – who does what when and scheduling it in order to meet the deadline.

Creating two new databases is a relatively simple but time consuming process. In theory, as new entities, no history should have been required in the new databases. However, when staff vacation and sick time accruals, meter reads and consumption history are considered, some of the data files were required to be carried over.

Beth further explains, “We had Vadim copy the previous regional district database including the General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Payroll and Utility Billing data sets. Then our staff proceeded to pull out any unnecessary information from each new database. Each of the applications was looked at separately to determine what history had to be brought over. “We didn’t need General Ledger history in the new databases. In the Payroll application for example, we needed history on vacation and sick time accruals, but didn’t require history on the first pays since T4s had been distributed to staff from the previous RD. Our IT department and Vadim worked closely together on this part of the project.”

“Vadim is a foundational piece in our financial operations,” states Beth. “It’s one of the few things that remained constant throughout this transition. We could rely on it to pay our staff and our suppliers. With so many changes occurring in that time, it was one less thing we had to worry about.”

Training new Strathcona RD staff on iCity Enterprise was provided by Implementation Specialists Gail Desnoyers and Karen Peacey. Staff at the Comox Valley RD ran the last payroll in June, ran payroll reports, completed all other batch processes and closed the period. Strathcona RD staff then ran all reports in every iCity application through the remote connection to the Comox Valley RD. Ian Roy, Vadim Technical Consultant, with assistance from the offsite data service provider, copied and transported the database, installed the database on the new server and completed the conversion to Enterprise. Strathcona RD staff then ran the iCity reports again and cross-referenced the two report sets to ensure everything converted successfully. Once all the checking and testing was done, the Strathcona RD was up and running on their own Vadim system.

“The deadline to have everything ready was not flexible – July 1, 2010 was ‘go live’ day. From the time I contacted Vadim to start working on this project, I was never made to feel like I was inconveniencing them in any way. I appreciated that,” describes Dawn. “There were some minor hitches, like printing AP cheques, logo files and other small technical issues, but Vadim resolved them all in a timely manner. I always expect glitches; nothing ever goes perfectly. There was a little delay in our first AP cheque run; overall, it went really quite smoothly.”

The cost of software support was a concern at the start of the database restructure. “The Vadim Regional Account Manager was our one point of contact throughout the entire project,” expresses Beth. “He arranged a relatively reasonable rate on support for us and supported one server with various databases. That was a big help. They didn’t double our cost, which was an initial concern.”

“We were able to complete the entire project within the budget and time period anticipated. Vadim helped us predict what the costs would be for their services, and the offsite data service provider’s quote for data centre services helped identify a good fit for our technical needs,” says Dawn.

Vadim’s ability to assist in this project reflects the company’s flexibility to accommodate, value of long term client relationships and willingness to work with a client to bring everything together on a strict timeline.