The city of Dothan in Alabama is implementing a unified suite of Oracle cloud applications to address foundational city services functions such as utilities, public works and administrative back-office support.

ESC Partners, part of the Oracle Partner Network (OPN), announced the agreement with Dothan, sometimes known as the Peanut Capital of the World. It is situated at the south-east corner of the state near the Georgia and Florida borders and has been seeking a cloud-based option to address transition to a digital city model for some time.

Execution of the project will serve to address Dothan’s objective of bringing its citizens closer to the city by offering a frictionless experience that spans all of the city’s services. Dothan’s leadership foresees elevated utilities customer services, reduced response time to outages and the ability to take advantage of improved field services functionality to gain efficiencies in performance.

The engagement of businesses, builders and developers for more effective communication and productivity is also forecasted.

In addition, the management and visibility of multiple functions will be dramatically improved by the consolidation of the systems onto one platform. The project, which will accomplish a transition from NaviLine Central Square to Oracle Cloud applications, is set to kick off this month.

“After an exhaustive search and discussions with multiple vendors, it was pretty apparent who was the leader in the industry,” said Jack Mason, IT director for Dothan. “The combination of Oracle’s strong utilities solution, well-referenced community support modules and ESC’s ability to provide consolidated implementation services provides us with confidence in such a large undertaking. ESC’s positive client references were notable and their approach to change management and the characteristics and process of their proprietary implementation methodology were impressive.”

ESC will collaborate with Dothan staff and work hand-in-hand with Oracle on the $12m project over the next 30 months. The project is expected to deliver a wealth of streamlined digital services including simplified digital permits processing and improved employee self-service.

“Our motto – one team, one goal – has resulted in 100% client satisfaction in our decade plus experience,” said ESC CEO RJ Kumar. “We intend to provide nothing less to the city of Dothan and we at ESC are proud and excited to be a part of such a landmark project. We look forward to working in tandem with city staff to deliver the value city of Dothan anticipates.”

ESC specialises in partnering with all sizes of towns, cities and municipalities to enhance their operational capabilities and fuel organisational innovation and efficiency. It teams with communities to develop adaptable and dependable overarching plans and processes that enable them to achieve positive business outcomes. The company has regional headquarters in the USA, India, Dubai, Colombia, Brazil, Argentina and the Philippines.

Dothan is one of the region’s most progressive cities. The community offers a mild winter climate, affordable housing, low property taxes and a wide variety of products and services that includes health care, education, shopping and cultural entertainment.

The OPN programme is designed to enable partners to accelerate the transition to the cloud and drive customer business outcomes. The programme allows partners to engage with Oracle through tracks aligned to how they go to market.