Staffordshire County Council has saved save £1.3m in the
six months since it installed an SAP system as part of a £7m IT
modernisation project.
The need to meet Tony Blair's 2005 e-government deadline was a
major driver behind the decision to introduce the new system, the
council said.
The council worked with consulting firm ITNet to implement a system
for 9,000 users, which covers accounts, procurement, human
resources, datawarehousing and business intelligence.
Andrew Felton, project manager at Staffordshire County Council,
said, "Local authorities are under massive pressure to change, and
they need to adopt new processes and systems to support this.
However, finding the time to do this from scratch is an almost
impossible task."
The council said it is on track to make £2.5m savings each year as
a result of replacing old systems with SAP technology.
"We have already estimated savings of £1.3m to £1.5m this financial
year. Our chief executive was only interested in tangible savings.
We estimated £2.5m annual and ongoing savings and we are on track
to achieve that," Felton added.
The largest cost saving came from replacing an old IBM mainframe
which cost up to £600,000 in IT maintenance and people costs, said
Felton.
The council also saved money by moving to SAP HR Shared Service,
which allowed it to reduce its HR employees from 150 to 127 and
change its payroll-centric system.
The council also evaluated Oracle's product suite, but decided that
SAP had a more integrated system and better local government
customer experience.
Aims and benefits
- Improve the quality and accessibility of processes and
information
- Provide a consolidated modern technology platform that will
enable Staffordshire Council and its partners to achieve
e-government targets and allow easier integration with
partners
- Enhance and automate the production of performance management
information
- Support a clear procurement and supplier management
strategy
- Allow common, best practice business processes to be
implemented
- Stronger system security and access functions to help
strengthen internal process. controls and audit ability.