Someone's finally taking on £10M Hull City Council ERP deal to replace Oracle

More than two and a half years after it began talking to vendors, a city council in northern England has awarded a contract to Workday for £10.7 million ($14 million) to create a finance and HR system that will replace the ageing Oracle ERP installation. Unitary authority Hull City Council awarded the contract for seven years …

[Pascal Monett]

"the Council is expecting to accrue [..] £1 million [..] digital efficiency saving each year"

Yeah.

We'll see how that works out.

Oh well, at least it's not the usual suspects with their snouts in the trough this time. Maybe some good will actually come of this.

[Like a badger]

Re: "the Council is expecting to accrue [..] £1 million [..] digital efficiency saving each year"

Whilst it's tempting to assume it'll end in tears because it involves the three letters E, R and P, there's a post-implementation review where Guildford Council replaced their ERP a few years back, and it all seems to have worked, not gone remarkably beyond budget, and didn't involve Sapacle. It is possible this one will go right, but I doubt William Hill will be giving good odds.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: "the Council is expecting to accrue [..] £1 million [..] digital efficiency saving each year"

So why don't any of these systems get adopted nationally?

City A implements an ERP with system Y and it's all great. Then city B down the road, with presumably the same council tax/payroll/parking fines to process, goes to ORACLE/SAP/MCAFFEE and it's a disaster.

We manage it with other stuff, if one health authority buys standard fire engines from Scania and another buys standard fire engines from Vovlo - shouldn't it raise eyebrows if a 3rd NHS trust goes to Boeing and asks them for a custom project to adapt the 737MAX for use as a fire engine ?

[Graham Newton]

Re: "the Council is expecting to accrue [..] £1 million [..] digital efficiency saving each year"

I think more eyebrows would be raised as to why so many NHS trusts needed fire engines.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: "the Council is expecting to accrue [..] £1 million [..] digital efficiency saving each year"

It's Friday, my brain left early for the weekend - I couldn't rememebr who builds ambulances

[collinsl]

Re: "the Council is expecting to accrue [..] £1 million [..] digital efficiency saving each year"

Most emergency services vehicles with custom bodies or internals come from bespoke manufacturers. They'll order in a load of chassis (van chassis for ambulances, rigid truck chassis for fire engines) and will build a custom body on the rear to the specifications of the ordering organisation. Shelvoke & Drewry were a common name for making fire engines in the 80s, as was Saxon in the 90s. A lot of these companies also make bus bodies, rubbish lorries, custom vehicles for cable laying, street sweepers etc. Dennis do a lot of this work these days for fire appliances and a company called "O+H" do ambulances.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "the Council is expecting to accrue [..] £1 million [..] digital efficiency saving each year"

"So why don't any of these systems get adopted nationally?"

Because local democracy means national government can't force local councils to do things a particular way, the quality and expertise of local councillors is woeful, and because no matter how you voted (or didn't) government remains fixated on the idea of competitive markets as the cure all, and government can set public procurement rules that councils have to comply with.

Incidentally, fire engines aren't standard, and generally are not fitted out by the truck maker - mostly they truck maker builds the cab and chassis, and then specialists like Angloco, Emergency One, Rosenbauer and others build the body and fit it out, usually offering a range of truck chassis. I think Scania do sell completed fire engines, I doubt they build and fit them out themselves.

[Jason Bloomberg]

Re: "the Council is expecting to accrue [..] £1 million [..] digital efficiency saving each year"

Because local democracy means national government can't force local councils to do things a particular way,

This is why I usually despair when Local Authority Devolution hits the headlines. First past the post isn't true democracy in my view and it always seems to result in partisan dickheads running the show based on their own political ideology rather than what people want or need, their own idea of what is best, who the money should go to.

The underlying problem in UK politics is that it is adversarial and tribalist, based on maximising gains for some minority by disadvantages the majority, rather than trying to minimise the adverse effects for all.

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: "the Council is expecting to accrue [..] £1 million [..] digital efficiency saving each year"

This is why I usually despair when Local Authority Devolution hits the headlines

And where each local hospital could "do their own thing" - when Trusts & similar changes got rolled out, the DoH effectively lost the ability to co-ordinate national IT provision for hospitals. Which meant that any later attempts to do common system (NHS Spine anyone? Makes HS2 look like a model of probity) failed because each local Trust/Health Board could say "no we want it *this* way" [1].

As one minister (maybe) once said of the NHS - it's not national and, in a lot of cases, it's not a health system, it's a revenue source for private industry [2]'

[1] But we *have to have these fields called this, even if they contain the exact same data as the Trust next door, otherwise our staff will get confused [3]"

[2] Why do we persist in the myth that "private is better". It costs X to deliver a service (say a Nursing Home). Cost for exactly the same provision with private industry = X+15% (because profit).. I've worked on both sides of the fence and haven't noticed any difference in work rate or efficiency between the two. If the cost for private is smaller, it's because they have cut costs somewhere, usually to the detriment of the overall service.

[3] Not if you bother to spend on training they won't. But that means they won't be able to "create value" for the Trust during the day of downtime required.

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: "the Council is expecting to accrue [..] £1 million [..] digital efficiency saving each year"

Sure they get to put out bids and chose one, they aren't forced to use the same model from the Central People's Patriotic Tractor and Fire Engine Factory.

But at least councils generally get a working fire engine for roughly the same price as the next town over - if one of them decided to go to a company known for massive cost overruns and get a system that runs millions over budget and fails to deliver after being a decade late - you might want to ask why.

Is it just ego? It's feels more important and manager-ish to be negotiating with an Oracle or SAP, than just buying the same boring ERP as Basingstoke? Or do they believe that Bracknell has unique needs in the council tax and parking space that is unmet by any existing system and needs fundamental research in Computer Science ?

Is it to get the fact-finding trip to Oracle's reference site and golf course in Hawaii?

Or is it just like central government, and they are going to get a directorship once they get voted out?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: "the Council is expecting to accrue [..] £1 million [..] digital efficiency saving each year"

Because procurement is shit. Our system is crap anyway. MPs should be dealing with national stuff, not opening the local school fete. Councils should be given more power & money with MPs setting national frameworks and guidelines for them to work in.

Eg, what a Cornwall local council needs will be totally different to Birmingham will be totally different to a London council will be totally different to Newcastle.

Put in proper guidelines with genuine local politicians who are not just shysters running their own businesses trying to get contracts.

As to procurement, my personal shit storm. It amazes me that I spent 6 months in 1 council investigation suppliers, what the staff were using, what would fit in best and reduce the workload for the support staff yet the number 1 comment was.....if you can reduce workload by 20% does that mean we can lose one FTE? Followed by..don't forget procurement can override everything you've done.

It's insane that people who can't turn on a laptop & I'd be wary about giving a bunch of crayons to can override my advice on what to buy in the technical field because some sales guy somewhere has seen the business case & lied his way through it

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Re: "the Council is expecting to accrue [..] £1 million [..] digital efficiency saving each year"

So maybe you need a city version, a town version and a rural one.

But I'm not sure that a Birmingham or Leeds system can't be downscaled for Newcastle or Sheffield, or that Cornwall is so different from Cumbria

[LybsterRoy]

Re: "the Council is expecting to accrue [..] £1 million [..] digital efficiency saving each year"

-- override my advice on what to buy in the technical field --

Or possibly because they can't afford what you recommend?

[czechitout]

Re: "the Council is expecting to accrue [..] £1 million [..] digital efficiency saving each year"

"Eg, what a Cornwall local council needs will be totally different to Birmingham will be totally different to a London council will be totally different to Newcastle."

Not from an HR and finance perspective though. I've implemented Workday at companies 40 times bigger than Hull Council and with workers in 30+ countries. This is an order of magnitude more complex than the requirements of all English councils combined.

The fact that each local authority have their own HR and finance systems is bonkers.

[Evilgoat76]

Re: "the Council is expecting to accrue [..] £1 million [..] digital efficiency saving each year"

Off the oriinal topic but

It's more common with fire appliances for the manufactuere to build out. Scanina and MAN do.

UV Modular build almost all UK ambulances and Wilker/O&H do whats left and these start as a chassis or standard van depending on if it's box or van conversion (obs)

Police cars generally ARE built by the supplier. Hence the comment a few weeks back "It'll be nice when BMW remeber how to make cars again so we can have nice things to play with" I've had a few of the Toyotas in and they are truly awful

[theOtherJT]

Re: "the Council is expecting to accrue [..] £1 million [..] digital efficiency saving each year"

Because, Bernard, once you create genuinely democratic local communities it won't stop there.

[itbod]

Calculation

Online it says Hull City council has 2400 employees. £10 million over 7 years. Works out at £50 per month per employee.

Don't know if that's good value or not

[hairydog]

Utterly crazy!

All local authorities do much the same thing.

The sensible approach would to have them all chip in to fund developing a system that they can all implement (collectively or individually), instead of re-inventing the wheel

[Rahbut]

Re: Utterly crazy!

I work with Local Authorities, and it seems to me that the left and right hand can't agree on the most simple things which is why projects overrun and there's scope creep. I'm not convinced councils are going to agree on how everyone does the same job slightly differently without intervention.

Part of the problem is the history of incumbent IT systems and vendors who don't like to interoperate - and it's not like Councils like change (well, not on the scale required).

There still appears to be a tremendous amount of wastage/duplication in local government, and not be even the slightest intention of doing anything about it. Empires need to be built; it's all about headcount/budget size/"power".

[Lee D]

Re: Utterly crazy!

No opportunity for backhanders, custom bespoke modifications, consultancy fees, ongoing service charges, long tied-in contracts, failing to deliver 75% of the way through, and then repeated extensions and consultancy for decades to come. Never gonna happen.

The real question is why central government don't just provide the same services to all of them so they don't need to engage third parties at all.

[collinsl]

Re: Utterly crazy!

Because if Central Government provide the system, then Central Government control the system, which then leads to Central Government dictating a whole set of politically motivated useless standards which don't quite work properly anywhere in the country and don't deliver for anyone fully. Plus it'll still be over budget, never finished, and worse than the old system.

[Guy de Loimbard]

Re: Utterly crazy!

Careful now hairydog!

You can't wrap sensible approach, local councillors and not reinventing the wheel into the same subject!!

[sozz]

Every authority has the same or similar needs. It seems so simple to just mandate a standard platform to all and implement that. Challenges are at least a) having to deal with local authority political 'independence', b) migration from myriad legacy systems/ EUDAs, c) effectively controlling/ managing the scale of the programme. To overcome these challenges, long term planning and structural set-up is required.... All while the legacy stuff is burning....