System Selection For Water Authority

Project goal

Manage the selection of an Accrual Accounting System for a business unit of a regional water authority.

Project details

The client, a major regional utility wanted to assess the profitability of one its business units, with a view to making that business unit autonomous. To do that it needed to choose an Accounting System.

In conjunction with key departmental managers, the consultant led a process of choosing that system. This process involved:

• discussions with Accounting staff to derive the requirements
• creating a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet to allocate points and weightings for each requirement
• inviting software vendors including Oracle and Computer Associates to give presentations on how their software would meet the requirements
• assess the winning bid. 

Project outcome

By the end of the assignment the client had a recommendation for choosing an Accounting System to meet the Accounting requirements for one of its business units.