Re: Easy win but challenging keep.
And Birmingham Council is somehow unique among all councils in the UK, Europe or the world in this ?
We have local government associations who provide guidance, advise and allow councils to knowledge share precisely so they aren't out there completely in uncharted territory buying technology they dont have a hope of understanding themselves.
I refuse to believe that Oracle somehow foisted a completely unknown system, with unknown limitations on them.
It is more likely instead that Birmingham council requested a system that they knew they'd have to modify (modernise ?) their processes to use, but then got stuck in the perennially expensive mode of trying to fit their existing work practises into it, probably because their workers didn't like the change, to a system that has had to be heavily modified to cope with it.
Unfortunately professional services and consultancy will always do what the customer asks, even if the customer is wrong and it costs them many millions more in the long run