Staffordshire County Council is to roll out SAP Duet,
the system that enables users to access core SAP functions through
Microsoft Office applications. It is one of the first major UK
organisation to announce plans to deploy the software.
Duet promises to increase efficiency because users do not have
to leave the Microsoft environment to access enterprise data. This
also reduces the need to train end-users on SAP systems.
The Duet implementation, which is scheduled to go live early
next year, is the final part of a five-stage strategy to
consolidate Staffordshire County Council’s IT architecture on SAP
enterprise software.
The council outsourced the maintenance of its SAP systems to
Fujitsu earlier this year in a deal likely to be worth more than
£1m in its first year.
It then rolled out SAP customer relationship management
throughout the council. The CRM system is also being deployed in
the 420 schools in the county, all of which use SAP as their
payroll system.
SAP’s social care module will be used to provide the council
with children’s electronic social care records in the second half
of this year.
The council is planning to upgrade from SAP R/3 to MySAP 2005 or
2006 this year. The move is designed to enhance the performance
management capability of its core back-office processes and to
prepare for the implementation of SAP Duet.
Council CIO Chris Robinson said, “Each directorate at the
council had its own self-standing IT department. We are running 450
applications at the moment. I am keen to streamline down to a
smaller number of applications.”
Staffordshire County Council aims to use Fujitsu as its
long-term outsourcing supplier for the SAP consolidation project,
but the different stages of the project are being awarded
separately so that the council has the flexibility to bring in
different suppliers if needed.
Robinson said, “I am not in the game of signing a 10-year deal
for Staffordshire because the council is in no way ready to go with
a mega deal. There are a lot of savings that could be made
internally.”
Read leader article:
Consolidation challenge
Vote for your IT greats
Who have been the most influential people in IT in the past 40
years? The greatest organisations? The best hardware and software
technologies? As part of Computer Weekly’s 40th anniversary
celebrations, we are asking our readers who and what has really
made a difference?
Vote now at:
www.computerweekly.com/ITgreats