Consultant leading Surrey County Council's £30m jump to new ERP system will bag £177,000 as £83m cuts bite local citizens

Surrey County Council, a local authority in southern England, has awarded Unit4 a £30m contract to replace its SAP ERP system, with a private consultant picking up £177,000 to lead the programme for two years. Described as an "alternative tier two system" in the outline business case [PDF], Unit4 is set to replace a SAP system …

[Anonymous Coward]

Is that a lot?

£88.5k/year to lead a £30m program?

[Martin-R]

Re: Is that a lot?

£380 a day sounds very cheap. OK so we don't know what hours they're expected to work for this but presumably quite a lot - can't see it being a half time job

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Is that a lot?

> £380 a day sounds very cheap. OK so we don't know what hours they're expected to work for this but presumably quite a lot - can't see it being a half time job

It's £380/day for year one. Then IR35 kicks in and it costs the Council 40%-ish more. :-)

(More seriously, it's £400 / day for 220-ish working days per year. Still a bargain for SCC though and shame on El Reg for going with the cheap clickbait headline instead of praise where it is due.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Is that a lot?

It doesn't seem like too high a salary, particularly as his name is out in public as the project lead, so the outcome will reflect on him professionally. Best of luck to him.

[Empire of the Pussycat]

Re: Is that a lot?

I'd guess it's part time though

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: Is that a lot?

Exactly. For once this sounds like a council got a consultant for a reasonable price.

[Buzzword]

How did they cope before?

Seriously, how did large organisations Plan their Enterprise Resources before dedicated ERP software came about? Is a £30m IT package really cheaper than a room full of secretaries?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How did they cope before?

I may have misunderstood this - they say once this is deployed they will save running costs of 77K in the first year, and 300+ in the following years. But if this thing costs 30 million... doesn't it take like 90 years for the efficiencies to pay off the upfront cost?

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: How did they cope before?

Sssh, don't pull on the obvious thread.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: How did they cope before?

> Seriously, how did large organisations Plan their Enterprise Resources before dedicated ERP software came about? Is a £30m IT package really cheaper than a room full of secretaries?

A secretary's salary + NI + pension contribution + cost of providing office space etc in leafy Surrey might come to roughly £100k per year. £30m therefore buys you 300 secretaries for 1 year; or 30 secretaries for 10 years (ignoring inflation).

So, no, not a lot cheaper than a room full of secretaries but fewer errors and a lot easier to audit.

[ravenviz]

Re: How did they cope before?

What is a ‘secretary’?

[Korev]

Any slippage into the following year would "result in the council incurring the full cost of SAP support and maintenance for 2022 (£700k), which becomes due in January 2022".

I hope the contract obliges the vendor to pay the SAP costs if they deliver late

[DS999]

Since delays are at least as much due to change orders by the client ("oh forgot about this, and this, and this, and that, and the other thing, we need that added in to the original design") I would think no one would sign such a contract without a clause saying that they'll only pay SAP's costs if the ORIGINAL spec is late. Once the client makes a change to that spec, they're on the hook for the delays.

[Korev]

That makes sense

[Steve Davies 3]

ERP Systems

Are just ways for set fire to £50 notes one after the other. So many grandiose schemes fail you have to wonder why anyone bothers with them these days. After all... Excell is good enough for Track and Trace why pay millions for next to nothing?

{sarcasm over}

[NeilPost]

Re: ERP Systems

3 partner/contracted companies to do, run by an external consultant and for a Council. What could go wrong.

They might as well keep the old system gking, hire a few more paper pushers/do-monkeys and save £29m.

Hope the Consultant not paying IR35 divvy’s as wages as he would therefore be masquerading as a FTE and the council will be on the hook for that too.