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Powell River Recreation Complex to replace software

Management system installed in February fails to live up to expectations
rec software
BOOKING ERRORS: Powell River Recreation Complex management have to replace management software installed earlier this year due to inefficiencies in the server-based product. Sara Donnelly photo

New management software will be purchased for Powell River Recreation Complex to replace software installed just 10 months ago.

Excitement over server-based software introduced in February was short-lived, according to City of Powell River manager of recreation Neil Pukesh.

“Unfortunately, it was just a startup company that really wasn't prepared to tackle what we needed to do,” said Pukesh. “It was a disaster.”

Pukesh appeared before the city’s committee of the whole on December 5 to request that the parks, recreation and culture department be given authority to purchase new cloud-based software.

The committee fast-tracked the request to council and it was approved at the December 7 council meeting.

The software installed earlier this year did not meet expectations on a number of levels, primarily on the back end with financial accounting, reporting, processes and workflow, resulting in inefficiencies, according to Pukesh.

“The organization we purchased it from led us to believe that it could make this happen and it was never resolved, so we had to make a very difficult decision and terminate our agreement with the company,” said Pukesh. “That will end as of December this year.”

Councillor CaroleAnn Leishman said when she has made bookings for facilities at the recreation complex, there were always errors.

“There were booking issues where I showed up for a skating practice and there were hockey teams on the ice,” said Leishman. “This happens a lot.”

The new program will not be implemented until August 2018.

Mayor Dave Formosa said it was a complicated situation and he felt the right decision was being made.

“They went with something that was innovative and when you deal with innovation you're dealing with new, and new comes with risk,” said Formosa. “They tried a new product with savings to the community and at the end of the day it turned out to not be.”

Costs associated with the purchase include one-time fees of $17,184 for implementation, $26,000 for a designated staff member to lead the implementation, a support fee of $2,600 and $7,935 for technology translation fees from August to December 2018 for a total amount of approximately $53,759.

“On a yearly basis, it's not that bad,” said Formosa. “We'll get good reporting and solid financial information into our offices.”

Annual operating cost for the new software will be approximately $19,000 per year, $3,000 more than the application being replaced, but with no increase to taxpayers, according to Pukesh.

“This is all part of our operating budget,” he said. “We have some room in our budget to make this happen.”