Report of the Deputy City Treasurer attached

The Executive considered a report of the Deputy City Treasurer and Director of HR OD and Transformation, which provided an update on the work undertaken to replace its legacy SAP HR and Finance system (also referred to as an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system), which was implemented in 2006 and would no longer be supported after 2027.

The Executive Member for Finance and Resources advised that since 2006, the existing legacy system had been heavily be-spoked, making development and upgrades both expensive and time consuming. The implementation of a new system presented an opportunity to upgrade not just the organisation’s software, but also the manually intensive ways of working in place alongside the current system.  Following the decision to procure a new system, a business case was developed that would take the programme into its next stages of development.   The business case requested an implementation budget of £17.4m, spread across four financial years, to cover the implementation period of the programme.  This work included the procurement and cost of the new system, the cost of licensing, implementation, change management and post-live support.  This was to be funded from the ICT Investment reserve and £2m per year increase budget for on-going subscriptions, licence and running costs.

Following the decision to select a preferred bidder, the programme had entered a period of contract finalisation with the preferred bidder which had ended at midnight on 11 March 2024.  The Deputy City Treasurer reported that the contact had been awarded to HCL Tech as the preferred bidder.

The next step included an Executive Kick-off between the preferred bidder’s team and the Council, to start engagement on a collaborative note. Once the contract was sealed, the onboarding and mobilisation of the new partners as well as the additional internal resources into the programme would begin, and the programme would move into its ‘design’ phase.

Work to align the current programme plan with the suggested programme plan of the preferred bidder had begun. This allowed the programme to adopt the ways of working of the implementation partner, whilst also ensuring the pre-design work already created by the programme was aligned with the implementation partner’s own timeline and expectations. 

The go-live date of the new system was still expected to coincide with the beginning of the new financial year in April 2025 but would be subject to confirmation and joint planning with the preferred bidder’s programme team during the design phase. The option of a phased go-live approach was being explored by the programme to ensure core services were prioritised for this go-live date and would remain unaffected by any timeline-related risks to the programme.

A significant amount of work had gone into the pre-design and discovery work of the programme to identify the needs and requirements of the organisation as it moved to a new system. For a programme of this nature it was noted that there were risks that additional needs and requirements may fall into the scope of the programme, these would be identified and closely controlled as work continued.  If further requirements were identified a further business case may be required if additional budget is required beyond contingency.

The report had been considered by the Resources and Governance Scrutiny Committee at its meeting on 7 March 2024  and it was noted that the Committee had endorsed the recommendation that Executive agree the next steps.

Decision

The Executive note the report and agree the next steps.