Opening of Proposals - Utility Billing System - North Star Utilities Solutions - Part 1

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NORTH sTAW • Design new and/or refine business process maps and workflows and document in the Solution Design Workbook • Produce go forward business process Use Cases along with roles and responsibilities • Document data elements and screen layouts • Define system configuration options • Complete the Solution Design Workbook The desired configuration and process documents generated within these sessions are used to facilitate the configuration of the CIS solution, which is performed in the next phase by a NorthStar Utilities Solutions Consultant and Implementation Specialist. Certain aspects of the solution design, such as product extensions and integrations, may require refinement beyond the scope of these sessions. The focus upon customizations and integrations during the design sessions is requirements gathering, not detailed design. Where a business need is identified that requires code development to customize the CIS system in order to integrate with other systems, NorthStar Utilities Solutions offers complete customization and integration consulting services for CIS solutions. Items that may be defined at this point include: • Extending CIS core functionality • Custom reports that are required to support informational and control points identified within the process • Custom interfaces and integrations • Data conversion and migrations Finally, the second phase of the NorthStar Utilities Solutions implementation involves understanding the relationship between the organization's business processes and the CIS. The primary deliverable within the Design Phase is the Solution Design Workbook that documents the NorthStar Utilities Solutions configuration in accordance with the organization's business processes. Phase Three: Development Within this phase the CIS software is installed on the organization's servers, except for SaaS customers. The primary deliverable within the Installation sub -phase is the Technical Validation spreadsheet that documents the organization's technical infrastructure. This spreadsheet is initially created by the NorthStar Utilities Solutions Implementation Specialist performing the installation during the Planning and Scoping phase, and should be maintained by the organization's CIS System Administrator any time a change is made to the infrastructure. At the end of the project, we recommend that the Technical Validation spreadsheet gets forwarded to the Technical Support Desk, in order for the Technical Support team to better understand the environment. When the CIS software is installed on the organization's production and test servers, these CIS environments contain blank databases in preparation for configuration specific to the organization's business processes. The installation of the CIS software is done South Bend laboratively with the customer's designated System Administrator for the CIS software. This approach provides the organization with the benefit of maximizing knowledge transfer about the installation process and the CIS Administrator's role. The NorthStar Utilities Solutions Implementation Specialist delivers administrator training to ensure that the organization's CIS administrator(s) can take on the role of internal experts for the installation, configuration, and ongoing administration of the system. —South Bend Indiana NorthStar Proposal Response