Decision 2019-176616. Investment in Oracle Enterprise Resource Planning System

In 2010 at the outset of the contract with Sopra Steria, part of the service improvement programme was the upgrading of the existing Origin HR system to Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS),

Oracle is an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system for HR, iRecruitment, iLearning and all aspects of Finance and Procurement.

It is incorporated into the organisation’s Capita Origin Duty Management System (DMS).

At an early stage, decisions were taken not to progress with some functionality such as iRecruitment and Self Service training course bookings. As a result, alternative methods are used to carry out these processes.

The platform is now aged and coming towards the end of its expected useful life.

It now requires significant investment and work to either upgrade or replace it.

It is not possible to upgrade the software on the current hardware and a project to deliver the required change is necessary to ensure continuity of service and support.

Support from Sopra Steria will end on 1 October 2020 when the responsibility for IT services transfers back to the Force/PCC . This is being managed as part of that project.

In addition, the current version of Oracle EBS will no longer be fit to receive updates and patches beyond December 2021.

This will result in potential security risks alongside organisational risks. This is in terms of the ability to pay staff and invoices if something should go wrong.

A decision is now required in respect of the following options to deliver an extensive 12-month project. This is to ensure service continuity of an ERP system beyond 2020/2021.

Options

This is a programme of work that was anticipated and some budget provision has been made within the Capital budget amounting to E1 .5m, in terms of Capital expenditure over 2 years, with a further £632k set aside for the resources required to deliver the project.

The options considered are as follows: