Shaer Halewood, Director of Resources introduced a report on the SmartBusiness Project regarding the proposed upgrade of the Council’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems.

The ERP systems integrated key business processes across Finance, Human Resources (HR), Procurement and other areas. The approach standardised and streamlined procedures to the administration of a number of key business activities. The Council’s current ERP system Oracle 1Business had been in operation since 2005 and was now considered obsolete and a critical risk to the business.

The SmartBusiness Project had gone through extensive Discovery and Design phases, including a Strategic Outline Case (SOC) and Outline Business Case (OBC) which was presented to Cabinet on 24 March 2020 and approval was given to complete a tender and evaluation exercise.

A Full Business Case (FBC) for the SmartBusiness Project, was now being prepared to discuss the future of the Council’s ERP systems and options to replace the current platform. To support the delivery of the SmartBusiness Project FBC, scrutiny by Members was now sought.

Shaer Halewood and Wendy Nicholls, Senior Business Designer, responded to a number of comments from Members and confirmed that a number of presentations had been made from preferred bidders before a preferred supplier had been chosen.

Councillors Moira McLaughlin and Pat Cleary confirmed that they were happy for Members with experience of these systems to sit on the Task and Finish Group and report back to the Committee.

On a motion by the Vice-Chair, seconded by Councillor Chris Carubia, it was -

Resolved – That this Committee:

(a)  appoints Members of the Committee , Councillors Chris Carubia, Paul Stuart and one Conservative Member (to be confirmed), to a Task and Finish group to support the development of the FBC;

(b)  agrees that a meeting of the Task and Finish Group be held on 6 January 2021 and that the outcomes of that meeting be reported to the meeting of the Policy and Resources Committee scheduled to take place on 20 January 2021.