Lake County’s journey to optimized Oracle Cloud implementation 

Lake County, Indiana sits on the southern shore of Lake Michigan and is home to about half a million residents. The community has a strong industrial presence, producing 25% of the nation’s steel and housing BP’s largest refinery. Lake County went live on Oracle Cloud in 2022 and immediately struggled with the new software leading to process breakdowns and audit failures. In late 2023, Lake County engaged Baker Tilly to take over the managed services of the Oracle Cloud platform, optimize and reimplement software, and with municipal advisory accounting service, return the County to compliance and auditability.   

At a recent conference, Baker Tilly’s Jeff Haynes, Director; Ben Penick, Program Manager and Dan Hedden, Principal sat down with Scott Schmal, Director of Finance at Lake County to delve into the challenges the County faced in its initial Oracle Cloud implementation, the steps taken to optimize the system and the key outcomes of the Baker Tilly Lake County collaboration.  

Q: What were the challenges that Lake County  faced before its Oracle Cloud transformation with Baker Tilly? 

Schmal: One of the major hurdles was the rushed implementation without proper buy-in or understanding from staff. Our initial training was insufficient, and many people were unfamiliar with their new roles and responsibilities within Oracle Cloud. This confusion contributed to a significant delay in payroll processing and left us struggling to maintain accurate financial reporting. By the time we realized the depth of the issues, we had already been flagged by the State Board of Accounts, making the situation even more urgent.  

Q: What specific issues were uncovered during the initial assessment? 

Schmal: One of the most significant findings was that the County’s new system wasn’t taking full advantage of Oracle’s capabilities. There was also a lack of formal closing processes for transactions and journals, causing discrepancies in financial reporting. Data accuracy was another major issue, particularly with reports that either didn’t exist or contained incorrect information. The most alarming discovery was that there was a $350 million variance between the ledger and the treasury. 

Q: What was Baker Tilly’s approach to optimization for Lake County? 

Penick: A big part of our approach was the collaboration between the Municipal Advisors and Oracle groups to ensure that we were mitigating gaps across process, technology, and compliance reporting. With Lake County being flagged by the State Board, data corrections and reporting were our top priorities, but Baker Tilly also identified significant challenges and pain points within Benefits and HR that needed to be addressed. Baker Tilly also emphasized continuous knowledge transfer and education throughout, keeping the County system admins very close to the redesign efforts. This emphasis ensured that the employees who oversee the system understood what changes were being made, why they were being made, and how they were being made, so that they could maintain the system following the conclusion of the project.  

Q: What are some of the key outcomes of the optimization process so far? 

Schmal: The biggest win has been bringing the County back to an auditable status. This required a lot of work on the part of the Baker Tilly team, especially in straightening out our 2022 financials. The lift-and-shift approach during the initial implementation left us with data integrity issues and a lack of proper controls, which made it challenging to carry over accurate balances between systems. Baker Tilly did an excellent job addressing these issues and having them partner with our auditors really helped restore the County’s credibility. The state is nearly done with the 2022 audit, and it looks like there won’t be any material adjustments, which is a huge relief after the challenges we faced in 2023. 

Hedden: The resubmission of the County’s financial statements for 2022 has been a huge win so far. The team was able to largely identify and correct all of the material variances and get the County back on track for a Regulatory Audit for CY2022. However, returning to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) reporting has always been the goal. In the next phase, we’ll be working closely with both the County and our Oracle team to ensure their system can generate accurate GAAP-compliant financial statements by the end of the year.

Penick: Additionally, the County has hired a new controller of finance to assist with cloud governance, which is helping to drive change internally. While there’s still work to be done in bringing additional resources on board, we’re moving in the right direction. Another big win was the successful relaunch of several Oracle modules, including EPM Workforce Planning. This has allowed the County to shift their budgeting and planning processes from manual spreadsheets in Excel to Oracle, integrating data from both HCM and ERP systems. 

Q: What’s next for Lake County and its Oracle Cloud system? 

Schmal: We're looking forward to continuing our optimization efforts, particularly with dashboards for real-time financial reporting and planning. This will allow County officials to make more informed decisions with better data visibility. Another key focus will be improving payroll processes and expanding our use of Oracle Cloud’s financial and HR capabilities. 

Baker Tilly’s knowledgeable enterprise solutions professionals bring forward leading practices from our years as Oracle implementers to collaborate with federal agencies, state and local governments, municipal utilities and other public sector organizations to help them achieve the modernization and optimization of back-office strategies, processes and technologies. With a focus on enhancing their software investment and improving their business practice, our approach is designed to drive adoption and sustainability. We help public sector entities achieve their digital transformation initiatives.