Agenda item

Lorna Baxter, Director of Finance, Tim Spiers, Director Digital and ICT, and Andrew Richards, ERP Manager have been invited to present a report on the drivers for change and actions taken to date concerning the Business Services Transformation project.

The Committee is recommended to consider the report, ask questions and AGREE any recommendations they may wish to make to Cabinet accordingly.

Councillor Glynis Phillips, Cabinet Member for Corporate Services, Lorna Baxter, Director of Finance, and Andrew Richards, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Manager presented to the Committee an update report concerning the Business Services Transformation Project.

Cllr Phillips conveyed Tim Spiers, Director of Digital and ICT’s apologies for being unable to attend the rescheduled meeting. Lorna Baxter introduced the report in greater detail. An important focus of the Business Services Transformation lay not just in making changes to core systems such as HR, Payroll, Finance and Procurement but in communicating with staff to ensure deeper confidence and competence around using the functions of any incoming system or systems. One of the learning points from the current system, which users variously reported as finding confusing, clunky, difficult or deficient. The most recent report which had gone to Cabinet, an outline business case in April 2023 had recommended the full or partial in-sourcing of  finance, procurement, HR and payroll functions, as well as enabling technology, which meant that was the direction being pursued. Nevertheless, within that broad outline remained a number of important decisions around full or partial insourcing in order to develop a preferred option on which to progress the business case. The option to remain with IBC, the existing provider, and improving efficiency was also being explored owing to a forthcoming upgrade. Steps taken to date had included the holding of wide engagement with stakeholders across the Council and the different functional areas through interviews and workshops to understand the project requirements. Following this, a business case would be developed to go to Cabinet in November. Timings-wise, it was noted that any shift to a new system would need to occur before or after IBC’s own upgrade; owing to its extent and complexity it would not be possible to make a move during that period. Known risks and the associated mitigation activities planned and delivered were kept on a detailed risk register, with progress reported to the programme board on a monthly basis.

In response, the Committee raised a number of issues for discussion including the following

-        Risk management. Many of the risks in the risk register were recognised by the committee to have high likelihood and/or impacts. It was, however, explained that these reflected the pre-mitigation risk levels, which it would be contrary to transparency to downplay, and that the Council’s mitigations would then be expected to reduce the levels of risk to more acceptable levels. It was put forwarded to the Committee that the failure to manage risks sufficiently at the time IBC had been originally adopted had led to significant disruption and pressure on staff to maintain services. It was recognised that there would be value in presenting expected post-mitigation risk levels, as well as greater granularity in regards to the scoring in future reports. It was also confirmed to the committee that there was a more detailed, scored risk register, which allowed greater targeting of resources to the most necessary mitigation activities.

-        The feasibility of implementing a change programme. A key challenge was identified as filtering out familiarity with the new system and its responsibilities to staff and managers further from the core of the organisation, a problem which would be made significantly harder owing to the high turnover in staff meaning there was less time to embed changes from a point of familiarity and a threat to continuity. In response, it was noted that staff turnover was on a downward trend, that the Council had learnt from the implementation of the previous roll-out and had set aside £1.5m to bring in additional capacity. Furthermore, it was ensuring the change was being undertaken slowly to allow pre-identification and mitigation of problems whilst putting as little additional stress on staff capacity.

-        The underpinning justifications for change. The Committee challenged whether the weightings used to determine the outcomes of the project were correctly aligned with the drivers as described in the report. Usability for staff formed only 30% of the weighting, as opposed to financial concerns at 40%, and yet the principal issue was frustration over usability. It was explained to the committee that if the weightings were to be factored into groupings, finance would occupy 40% and the other three aspects – business users, functional users and technical/implementation – formed 60%, illustrating the concern for usability over simply financial impacts.

-        Capturing the ‘real’ scope. Given the necessity of workarounds to the system the Committee expressed concern over whether these would really be captured and thus whether the new system would provide a real solution. A survey had gone out across the organisation two days prior and had had a 35% response already. It was expected that there would be a high response rate owing to the fact respondees had volunteered to be involved, the high initial response rate and the energy of managers in following up those who had not replied. This exercise would enable the capture of a detailed picture of usage, both within and without the system.

-        Other IBC partners. Further information was sought regarding the decisions made by other partners using the IBC system. One operational partner, Kensington and Chelsea, was confirmed to have given notice, the remaining operational partners had given no indication of wishing to move away, and the founding strategic partners remained committed to the system. On further questioning officers confirmed that they were in regular contact with the project lead at Kensington and Chelsea. The driver for change had been a similar issue to Oxfordshire - the level of inflexibility of the current system, but primarily from an HR perspective. Kensington and Chelsea had made the decision to move to a system provided by Oracle, and officers were seeking to learn as much as they could from their experience.

ACTION.: For the in-depth, scored risk register to be distributed to members.

It was AGREED to submit a report to Cabinet outlining the Committee’s observations concerning its preference for an in-house system, issues of staff capacity, the potential disconnect between the weighting of the outcomes of the project and the stated drivers, but making no recommendations.