Two local councils have signed multimillion-pound deals to
implement wide-ranging SAP systems to provide integrated local
services and replace legacy software.
Staffordshire County Council will spend £7.2m with ITnet for a
one-year SAP project, while Trafford Metropolitan Borough Council
has spent £4m on SAP modules.
Trafford will replace mainframes with SAP modules that include
financial, procurement, work management and a customer relationship
management system, which are linked using workflow tools and
datawarehousing.
Staffordshire is replacing 50 legacy systems with a similar range
of modules that will be linked to other public bodies in the
county, such as the fire service, police, probation, courts and
colleges.
Trafford's head of e-government Mark Gibbison said the key task was
to modify SAP settings to match council business processes while
examining those processes "to get rid of antiquated ways of
working".
Ovum analyst Philip Carnelly warned of the hidden costs of such
implementations. He said SAP implementations can cost up to six or
seven times more than the price of the software.
