Minutes:
Future Provision of the Council’s Core HR and Finance System
The recommendation from Cabinet in respect of the future provision of the Council’s Core HR and Finance system was proposed by Councillor B. Cooper and seconded by Councillor G. Denaro.
In proposing the recommendation Councillor Cooper explained that over the last few years, weaknesses had been identified in the financial management, planning and forecasting capabilities of the systems that were used by the Council. It had been reported by officers, by external and internal audit, and more recently within the Corporate Peer Challenge, that the Council’s finance systems did not enable the authority to make decisions based on accurate, timely or easily retrievable information. This would be increasingly important if the Council was to meet future challenges in the commercial environment.
Councillor Cooper commented that there were a significant number of manual processes that were undertaken in payroll, payments and HR to ensure that data could be accessed and reported on by officers and external partners. Furthermore there were no seamless links between systems and information had to be manually transferred between the systems. This could cause potential data issues when considering consistent and reliable information. Councillor Cooper expressed the view that it was worrying that managers were unable to see their budgets on the existing financial systems and had to rely on spreadsheets to undertake budget monitoring. This could lead to a lack of ownership and accountability, and to poor forecasting and financial monitoring.
The Council’s contract with the provider of the existing finance system was coming to an end so Councillor Cooper suggested that it was an excellent time to look at the wider back office systems and improve the core services of ICT, HR, and Finance, including the general ledger, payroll, payments and cash receipts.
The back office functions were
delivered by a variety of systems and there were advantages to
having an integrated system. A number of options had been
considered by Cabinet when reaching a decision
including:
· To continue as at present with existing systems.
· To implement the best system for each function, but this would not lead to integration of systems.
· To implement an Enterprise Resource Planning solution (ERP) (an integrated collaborative system).
· To partner with a Local Authority that was using an ERP solution.
· To outsource services.
Officers had concluded that an ERP system would provide a flexible, integrated solution for the Council, and this had been supported by the Cabinet.
Councillor P. McDonald questioned the impetus for reviewing the systems used by the Council and for deciding to invest in a new integrated system. Councillor Cooper advised that this was due to an emerging realisation that these systems were not fit for purpose. Councillor McDonald also requested clarification about the length of time since the Council had last invested in new systems for HR, finance and cash receipting and the costs of these systems. Members were advised that over £8 million had been invested in various IT systems over a period of time.
Finally Councillor Van der Plank suggested that alongside investment in this new system there needed to be improvements in relation to the accuracy of the data used by the Council as well as to the culture within the organisation. An IT system alone would not resolve these issues and it was important that the appropriate training for officers was provided.
RESOLVED that the business case for the implementation of an integrated Enterprise Resource Planning System (ERP) is approved.
[Once Members had gone into exempt session the Chairman agreed that a five minute comfort break should take place. During this comfort break Councillors M. Buxton, R. Jenkins, L. Mallett, C. McDonald, P. McDonald, S. Shannon and M. Thompson left the meeting. They therefore took no part in the discussions regarding the exempt matters and did not vote during that exempt session.
During consideration of this item Members discussed matters that necessitated the disclosure of exempt information. It was therefore agreed to exclude the press and public prior to any debate on the grounds that information would be revealed which relates to financial or business affairs.]