Overcoming setbacks and achieving Oracle Cloud success in Lake County with Baker Tilly

Lake County joined Baker Tilly to share insights from a rocky beginning in their Oracle Cloud journey, to a complete turnaround driving success, positivity, and growth in a recent webinar. Understand how Lake County achieved Oracle Cloud success with Baker Tilly and watch the webinar recording here.

Located in the northwest of Indiana and a part of the Chicago Metropolitan area, Lake County stands as a significant industrial and historical hub. Lake County is notable for producing 25% of the United States’ steel. The County houses British Petroleum’s Whiting Oil refinery, which processes nearly 500,000 barrels daily. In a recent webinar, Scott Schmal, Director of Finance, Lake County alongside Baker Tilly’s Jeff Haynes, Director; Ben Penick, Program Manager and Dan Hedden, Principal shared insights into the County’s challenging Oracle Cloud implementation and its subsequent turnaround with Baker Tilly.

Lake County’s Oracle Cloud journey began when the County decided to upgrade from its legacy system. The initial implementation, handled by a different system integrator, commenced in 2021 with a planned go-live date of January 2022. The implementation included ERP, EPM and HCM modules but faced critical issues:

• Knowledge transfer gaps: The County staff lacked an understanding of fundamental processes, focusing instead on basic button-pushing operations.
• Data migration issues: The implementation approach resulted in transferring data without proper cleansing or validation, leading to data integrity problems.
• Inadequate reporting: Custom reports merely replicated old formats without leveraging Oracle’s advanced capabilities, containing many inaccuracies.
• User adoption challenges: Training sessions were plagued by system errors and failures, which led to increased resistance to change and reduced user confidence.

The breaking point

The situation reached a crisis point when the Indiana State Board of Accounts declared Lake County’s 2022 books not auditable. Recognizing the need for immediate action, Lake County sought a new implementation partner. After evaluating a dozen potential integrators, they selected Baker Tilly based on their strong municipal advisory capabilities and experience in successful Oracle Cloud implementations. The County also recognized Baker Tilly’s expertise in Indiana State audit practices and budgeting procedures.

The scale of the challenge

The magnitude of Lake County’s financial reconciliation issues became clear during the assessment phase. The County’s financial statements showed a discrepancy of approximately $350 million in cash at the end of the calendar year, a material difference that required immediate action. This situation was concerning given that the County had previously maintained reliable reconciliations both in their treasury department and audit ledger.

Baker Tilly’s approach

Baker Tilly’s implemented a three-phase approach to address Lake County’s challenges:

• Calibration phase: The phase includes an initial assessment of client needs and identification of key stakeholders, focusing on understanding drivers and desired outcomes of optimization. The development of an optimization inventory is also completed in this phase.
• Assessment phase: A detailed analysis of issues across people, processes, technology and data categories is conducted, followed by the creation of prioritized findings and recommendations. At the end of this phase, an actionable roadmap is developed.
• Execution phase: The client and Baker Tilly agree upon an optimization execution strategy. Baker Tilly prepares a personalized optimization execution calendar, and the solutions are implemented based on client-approved priorities. This phase has a concurrent focus on both immediate fixes and long-term solutions.

Lake County’s optimization successes

Lake County’s partnership with Baker Tilly yielded remarkable results across different fronts. The County has successfully corrected and resubmitted its 2022 financials to the State Board of Accounts, leading to an auditable state. The achievement came through the implementation of systematic fixes that addressed not just immediate issues but also their underlying causes, ensuring the long-term stability of financial systems.

The County has also made progress in strengthening its organizational capabilities. Through strategic hiring initiatives, they have brought on board key financial positions, enhancing the accounting expertise within the auditor’s office. On the technology front, Lake County has achieved several important milestones. The successful relaunch of Oracle EPM for planning and budgeting has dramatically improved their financial planning capabilities. They have also implemented an HR Help Desk system for internal ticketing and launched new HCM journeys to streamline the new hire onboarding process. Additionally, the County has successfully rolled out a phase of Oracle Redwood UI across HR, payroll and time/labor functions, modernizing their user interface and improving system usability.

The partnership with Baker Tilly for Managed Services has provided the County with reliable support for daily operations and system maintenance. Baker Tilly’s support has been crucial in managing quarterly updates and implementing new features, ensuring the system continues to evolve and improve over time.

Looking ahead

Lake County’s vision for the future focuses on areas of development and improvement. In the immediate term, the County is working diligently to complete its 2023 and 2024 audits, with particular attention to the challenges presented by the data conversion. The County is also planning enhancements to its EPM functionality. These improvements will focus on expanding their budgeting and strategic planning capabilities, implementing advanced automation features and developing dashboarding and reporting tools. These enhancements are expected to provide better insights into financial data and streamline the planning process across departments.

System optimization remains a priority, with plans to continue the rollout of Oracle’s Redwood UI across the remaining modules. The County is also working on deeper integration between its HCM, EPM and ERP systems to create a more seamless user experience and improve data flow between different domains.

With a proven track record of success in Oracle Cloud implementations, Baker Tilly specializes in identifying and tackling hurdles across technology, people, and processes. Our optimization and implementation approach ensures smooth transitions, better user adoption and long-term success.