Department of Finance & Administration
Dave Goetz, Commissioner

Why Is Change Necessary

The switch to the Edison system will obviously require a great deal of change. Staff members will not only have to learn how to use a new computer system, but in many cases an entirely different business process. Agencies will face the challenge of continuing to meet their mission-driven goals while working to make a successful transition from the legacy systems to Edison. Given these challenges, many have wondered just why a change is necessary.

The sheer number of the State’s unintegrated systems is one important reason to implement an ERP solution. Currently, there are more than 20 systems that support human resources and payroll administration, and more than 50 systems that support financial management, procurement and other administrative areas. This fragmented technological environment has the following drawbacks:

• Data itself is fragmented and hard to bring together in a usable format, making it difficult for management to generate useful and timely information for decision making.
• Systems are costly to maintain and operate.
• Systems are difficult to use – especially for employees who are used to a Windows-based environment.

Some of these systems are also 20 to 30 years old. SEIS, the State’s HR/Payroll system, was originally implemented in the early 1970s in a dramatically different technological landscape. Furthermore, many of these systems were developed using the COBOL programming language, which is no longer taught to future programmers at colleges and universities. As a result:

• The State is exposed to significant risk as the current technologies are becoming obsolete and increasingly difficult to replace or even maintain.
• The State is unable to easily take advantage of new technologies such as bar coding and the Internet.
• It is often difficult to modify the systems as many changes must be made to the actual computer code instead of simply changing the system’s configuration, as is the case in more modern systems.

Quite simply, the current systems no longer meet the State’s business needs. It is expected that the Edison system will relieve a great deal of the administrative burden that currently rests on managers, and enable State employees at every level to better serve the needs of Tennesseans.