Santa Barbara completes CIS implementation with Advanced

Santa Barbara, CA and Toronto, Canada. November 19, 2008

The City of Santa Barbara (the City) has completed the transition from its legacy system to CIS Infinity, the customer information and utility billing solution by Advanced Utility Systems (Advanced).

The City evaluated several software vendors for the selection of a new utility billing system based on a set of specific criteria. This included the overall experience of the vendor; the vendor’s written and demonstrated understanding of the project scope, specifications and requirements; qualifications of individuals to be assigned to the project; favorable feedback from references and cost.

Advanced proved to the City that it was the right vendor to move forward with after completing a request for proposal response and presenting a full software demonstration.

Further to the selection criteria, the City was initially motivated to adopt a new customer information and utility billing system because it needed a solution that was functionally rich. CIS Infinity came out ahead amongst other software solutions. As Robert Samario, Assistant Finance Director describes, “Our choice to select CIS Infinity was based on what we believed were the overall range of capabilities of Advanced’s product offering relative to other systems we evaluated and, particularly, its ability to address complicated rate scenarios in our refuse services.”

In addition to the complete extensive suite of features CIS Infinity provides, Advanced also provided a solid waste enhancement. These enhancements included the ability to distinguish accounts from one hauler to another as well as the ability to support different sequences for a container at an account depending on the day of pickup. These enhancements continue to add value to the solid waste management module in CIS Infinity.

“CIS Infinity was designed so that minimal programmer involvement would be required with respect to configuration,” comments Steven White, Vice President of Research and Development for Advanced. He goes on to say, “When new requirements need to be made, CIS Infinity is easily configured. This often times eliminates custom coding projects that can result in unexpected costs.”

The City’s implementation of CIS Infinity is complete with a successful go-live which Robert Samario, Assistant Finance Director attributes to the dedication of staff on both vendor and client teams, “I am extremely proud of the work our staff did in staying on top of this project and keeping everyone on task. As well, the Advanced staff maintained a high degree of professionalism and commitment to this project throughout, which we greatly appreciated.”

For more information visit www.harriscomputer.com

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