Decision details

(i)  To note in accordance with the Financial procedure rules capital expenditure of £1.47m in 2017/18 capital programme to facilitate the purchase of additional modules from Unit 4 to enable the ERP system, as part of the capital digital transformation project. This is subject to Council Capital Board reviewing the business case to proceed.

(ii)  To approve the one-off increase in the revenue budget of £1.35M to facilitate the change process, and this to be funded from savings as a consequence of the project and the Transformation Reserve. This expenditure will be phased over 2017/18 and 2018/19 with the majority of the expenditure being in 2018/19.

By implementing an ERP system it will enable the council to

•  consolidate the number of IT applications, reducing the number of contracts and independent support and maintenance costs,

•  rationalise and streamline business processes

•  enable easier access to correct data

•  provide a single view of debt

•  provide a single view of the employee

•  support the provision of a single point of payment for the customer

•  improve management information

1.  Implement a completely new system including replacement of the financial ledger. This has been rejected as the cost of acquiring and implementing a new financial ledger as well as the other ERP modules makes the cost prohibitive.

2.  Do nothing. This option has been rejected as the current systems are not fit for the future as they are cumbersome in their business processes. They do not readily provide the management information required to make informed, evidence based decisions helping managers to run the business effectively.