4-Attachment 2 - Introduction and Background.docx

Attachment 2 – Introduction and Background

A. City Overview and Operating Environment

Salt Lake City Corporation serves a diverse population, delivering services across public safety, utilities, community development, housing, recreation, permitting, licensing, courts, and administrative functions. The City operates multiple departments, divisions, and programs that interact with the public and collects payments through a variety of channels and locations.

The City’s operating environment includes centralized locations, remote staff, online self-service channels, and staff who process payments via phone or other non-counter (non face-to-face) channels. Payment activity occurs daily at multiple facilities, including City Hall, public safety offices, courts, parks, cemetery, golf courses, recreation centers and community centers. The City requires a cashiering solution that can operate consistently across this distributed environment while maintaining PCI controls, cyber security, reporting, on-demand data access, and NACHA compliance.

The City is committed to modernizing its financial systems, improving customer and constituent experience, and ensuring secure, compliant payment processing that is aligned with industry standards and public-sector best practices.

B. Current Cashiering Environment and Challenges

The City currently utilizes a combination of multiple cashiering solutions and custom-built systems to support day-to-day cashiering and point-of-sale operations. These environments have evolved over time to meet individual departmental needs and these include Teller, TMS Cash Register, Online Cash Receipt (OCR), OpenCounter, LightSpeed, ActiveNet, and Square. The City uses Chase Paymentech for merchant services under a State of Utah statewide cooperative contract contract. The City also utilizes a lockbox-style process to import transaction data from external systems into Workday.

The current cashiering state has resulted in many challenges, including but not limited to the following:

1. Inconsistent cashiering workflows and user experiences across departments.

2. Limited standardization of payment processes, procedures, controls, and reporting.

3. High complexity with bank reconciliation and integrating payment data with Workday Financial Management.

4. Ongoing support efforts for payment errors.

5. Limited ability for new programs and transaction types.

6. The City also maintains several sub-systems that are not traditional POS platforms but require payment processing and integration into a unified cashiering solution. These challenges have driven the City’s need for a consolidated, city-wide approach.

7. Limited ability to centrally record and reconcile transactions originating from external systems.

C. Goals and Objectives of the City-Wide Cashiering System

The primary goal of this RFP is to acquire a single, comprehensive cashiering and POS solution that can be implemented city-wide (excluding Public Utilities (PU) and Department of Airports) and support both current and future operational needs.

Objectives include:

1. Standardizing cashiering operations and payment workflows across all departments.

2. Improving integration with Workday Financial Management for accurate, timely financial posting and bank reconciliation.

3. Establishing Workday Financial Management as the City's authoritative financial system through automated transaction posting, reconciliation, and reporting.

4. Supporting multiple payment channels, including in-person, online, offsite, mobile, kiosks, and IVR.

5. Improving customer experience through faster, seamless transactions and flexible payment options (for collections).

6. Strengthening internal controls, cyber security, audit trails, and compliance with PCI and NACHA regulations.

7. Minimizing system and payment posting errors.

8. The ability to support new programs, departments, and payment types without requiring significant custom development.

9. Supporting the ability to centrally record and reconcile transactions originating from external systems. Expanding self-service payment capabilities through kiosk solutions that provide customers with additional payment options while maintaining appropriate financial controls.

D. Key Stakeholders and Departments Involved

This initiative will involve collaboration across multiple City departments and stakeholder groups, including but not limited to:

1. The Treasurer’s Office and Finance

2. Information Management Services (IMS)

3. Public Safety (Police, Fire, Dispatch)

4. Community and Neighborhoods

5. Public Lands

6. City Recorder

7. Justice Court

8. Licensing and Permitting

9. Community Reinvestment Agency (CRA)

The selected Offeror must work closely with designated City project managers, City staff, and departmental representatives throughout the duration of the implementation.

E. Multi-Department and City-Wide Use Cases

The City requires a solution that will support diverse use cases across departments, including high-volume transactional environments, payment acceptance for multiple system generated invoices and seasonal or event-based operations. Examples include:

1. Permit and license fee collection

2. Record request payments (i.e. GRAMA, Police/Fire reports, etc.)

3. Recreation program fees, registrations, and rentals

4. Fines, citations, and court payments

5. Special Assessment payments

6. Utility or service-related payments

7. Lease, rent, and loan payments

8. Miscellaneous, general ledger direct coded payments

These use cases are currently supported by a variety of departmental systems of record and business applications. Current systems include, but are not limited to:

1. Accela

2. Workday Accounts Receivable Invoices (ARI)

3. ACT

4. ActiveNet

5. JustFOIA

6. Bryt

7. Case Management

8. Chronogolf (Golf Genius)

9. CORIS

10. OpenCounter

11. Salesforce

12. Sportsman

13. Wrapped Gift Cards

The proposed Solution shall support integration with existing and future systems of record where feasible and provide a consistent framework for payment processing, reporting, reconciliation, and financial management across departments.

The proposed Solution must allow departments to operate independently where necessary while enabling centralized oversight, reporting, and financial reconciliation by the Treasurer’s Office.

F. Definitions and Acronyms

Definitions for acronyms used in this RFP are below:

1. ACH: Automated Clearing House

2. IVR: Interactive Voice Response

3. POS: Point of Sale

4. RFP: Request for Proposals

5. PCI DSS: Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard

6. ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning

7. NACHA: National Automated Clearing House Association

8. E-check: Electronic Check

9. GL: General Ledger

10. OCR: Online Cash Receipt

11. NFC: Near-Field Communication