San Mateo County Implements Navision In Record Time

Late last year, San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office was given a new mandate. Due to budgetary changes in the state of California, beginning in January their Forensics Department would need to bill the County’s 20 cities for forensic services. Previously, these costs were incurred by the County. 

Getting this requirement with minimal lead time to implement the change, San Mateo County immediately set out on a search for software that was flexible enough to meet their needs, but not overly complex, requiring a lot of customization. Narrowing their search down to a final four, San Mateo found what they were looking for with SCS in Microsoft Business Solutions Navision.

“We were impressed with Navision from the very beginning,” comments Narayan Nair, Financial Services Manager for San Mateo County, Sheriff’s Office. “It did not need much customization for us, just a few reports here and there,” he adds. “The other solutions were just too big and too complex for our needs right now.”

Even with other system requirements that included interfacing to the County’s other systems, such as the County Financial System (IFAS), SCS was able to implement the Forensics Department solution in just two weeks!

“Navision had the most functionality, flexibility and ease of use of all the possible systems we and our business consultant looked at for this application. We loved the workflow construction feature, and the simple way to change report formats" remarks Lee Lazaro, Director of Finance and Administration for the Sheriff’s Office. Sheriff’s Office staff has already had training on Navision designer tools so they will be able to make a lot of those changes on their own.

In the short time that the Forensics Department has been up and running on Navision, more and more uses for this highly scalable system have been realized. 

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In fact, according to Narayan, “Things have gone so well with the implementation and our using Navision that we may be looking into replacing Sheriff’s Office Accounts Receivable Program with Navision as well.”

Getting Navision into San Mateo County Sheriff’s Office for a larger implementation should be no problem at all since the product and SCS have already gone through full County approval for the Forensics Department implementation. San Mateo County even invited SCS representatives to the California State Sheriff’s Association Financial Managers conference earlier this year in Napa.

“We look forward to a long, beneficial partnership with San Mateo County,” comments Annette Walker, SCS Regional Manager in Northern California. “They have been an excellent team to work with.”

San Mateo County’s Amanda Griggs processes biological samples for controlled substances.