Commission approves Workday ERP contract after technical and security Q&A

The City of Key West approved a 10-year enterprise resource planning agreement with Workday (and implementation partner Iron Brick/ERPA) to replace several legacy systems. Procurement staff said annual subscription and implementation costs are substantial but comparable to current annual software spend when aggregated; staff negotiated reductions and will continue to refine implementation pricing.

Procurement manager Lucas explained the financial rationale and asked the commission to approve moving to a cloud-based ERP for payroll, HR, and financials. “The difference in these costs is about $40,000,” he told the commission when comparing the new platform to existing annual software costs. Workday representatives described security and uptime: "Workday is a very secure system. We have not been hacked, in the past," a Workday representative said, and the vendor noted FedRAMP and SOC compliance and the company’s customer-care commitments. Implementation partner ERPA described a run‑parallel approach with zero expected downtime during cutover and said customizations would be configuration-driven rather than custom-code heavy.

Commissioners approved the contract and asked staff to negotiate fixed-rate language, clarify termination provisions, and provide regular milestone updates during implementation. Staff was directed to preserve legacy data and establish archival/restore capabilities as part of the migration plan.