Fujitsu wins £9m contract hike for Oracle HR system running nearly 3 years late at Northern Ireland Education Authority Fujitsu has been awarded a £9.2m contract extension by the Northern Ireland Education Authority for changes to the implementation of an Oracle HR and payroll system that is already nearly three years late. The project – first known as the EA Integrated Financial Management Information System, now dubbed EA One Project – began …
It must be very hard to be the first organisation to put a brand new technology stack in and find all the pitfalls and problems. Oh wait.. what’s that.. e-Biz suite has been around for years with many successful implementations in complex businesses? Why do none of these integrators learn from past successes and failures?
I always get a big kick out of all the self-righteous criticism of these public-sector procurements. Private-sector operations have all the same problems and snafus and failures as happen in the public-sector, it just doesn't get in the papers. It's private. Plus, the onerous specification and bidding procedures and low-bid requirements aren't nearly as stupid, inflexible, and self-defeating in the private-sector as they are in public entities. Never, ever forget: It's easy to spec a window air conditioner and take the low bid, with complex integrated IT systems, not so much.
Two reasons. Firstly, as above, it is my money the public sector is wasting.
Secondly, when a private sector company implements a new finance, HR or payroll solution it is usually the first time they've implemented that solution and/or paradigm (e.g. on-prem to cloud) it so you'd expect the usual bumps in the road.
The public sector on the other hand have done hundreds, if not thousands of implementations. For example, every council in Britain has their own finance, HR and payroll solutions. Therefore, not only should they be absolute experts in those implementations, they should also have their own off the shelf framework for implementing a public sector payroll solution which can be shared and followed.
Of course, they don't have that because every department, council etc. is its own silo, with no information shared, let alone a central team of "payroll implementers" who can go from project to project bringing best practice and "gotchas" from previous implementations with them.
Major contracts, public and private, tend to run over budget and take longer because the purchaser is locked into the contractor. Unless one is willing to scrap the sunk cost and start over, you grin and bear it.
As has been said for centuries, "in for a penny, in for a pound."
Version1 have a lot of good people working for them, they've really grown a lot over the past decade. It would be good if they can deliver an efficient service to Northern Ireland Land and Property and maybe shake up Fujitsu a bit (they may be feeling too big to fail at the moment).
I'm going anon because, while I was about to say I never worked for Version1, I realised I worked for a company which they bought last year.
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