Oracle the POWER in Polk County

Oracle and AST Corporation, a Certified Advantage partner in the Oracle partner network, broke the metaphorical champagne bottle on a successful enterprise resource planning launch at Polk County, Florida. The launch of the ERP system running on Oracle applications, has been called “a major milestone for the county … to respond quickly to the needs of its citizens and businesses, and to efficiently collect data related to people, expenditures, projects, budgets and revenues.”

POWER (yes, that is really the acronym, derived from Polk Oracle Web-Enabled Resources) is a deployment of the Oracle e-business suite for the Polk County Board of County Commissioners, the county’s clerk of courts, the county’s chief financial officer, comptroller and treasurer. This system automates and serves key county business processes including financial management, procurement, inventory management, project and grants management, human resources management and payroll management.

The county’s previous system was Governmental Accounting Financial Reporting System, in place since 1987 (The Chump can hear it now: “Daddy, did they have computers back then?”) before county officials finally decided it was out of date. Imagine that.

The first phase of the project was launched in November 2005, with the target go-live date reportedly met on schedule.

With the new ERP system, the county hopes to provide more time to staff in analyzing information, generating real-time reportage and developing solutions. “Paper-based processes have become obsolete,” insightfully and correctly stated board of county commissioners clerk and accountant Richard M. Weiss. “Our new system eliminates inefficiencies inherent in those old processes and will give county staff more time to analyze critical data.”

Established in 1995, AST Corporation is a systems integrator with customers across a wide range of industries in commercial and public sectors. AST Corporation assists in complete lifecycle implementation, systems upgrades, business process redesign, project management, systems administration, post production support and training.

The Oracle Partner Network is a global business network of 16,000 companies who create software solutions based on Oracle software. Through access to Oracle’s resources, the Oracle Partner Network program provides partners with the resources they need. Partners who are “able to demonstrate superior product knowledge, technical expertise and a commitment to doing business with Oracle” qualify for the Oracle Certified Partner levels.

Oracle, as they say, is the world’s largest enterprise software company.