Birmingham City Council has begun work on a £130m SAP
project that is designed to improve its Audit Commission rating by
saving £450m over the next 10 years.
Birmingham, the UK's largest local authority, plans to roll out
MySAP 2006 to more than 10,000 people over 12 months from October,
to help it manage procurement more effectively.
The project is the first large IT implementation following the
Audit Commission's annual inspection in February, which concluded
that Birmingham City Council was only meeting "minimum
requirements."
The commission awarded the council two stars out of a possible
four, placing Birmingham in the lower 21% of local authorities.
"We have got to fundamentally change processes across the
organisation. We have traditionally been quite a silo-based
organisation and we are moving to a more corporate approach," said
Birmingham City Council director Glyn Evans.
Council managers and finance staff will use the SAP system to
manage programmes, projects and procurement, and to monitor their
budgets.
Evans expects that the project will save the council £450m over
the next 10 years, with the full annual benefit coming in the third
year. The savings will come from better procurement and a reduction
in head count. The council expects to realise a further £350m in
benefits over the coming decade.
A 100-strong team of IT professionals is implementing the
system. They are split equally between permanent council employees
and people on secondment from a joint venture company that
Birmingham set up with Capita last April. The joint venture,
Service Birmingham, has a 10-year contract worth £470m to run the
council's IT function.
Birmingham is also evaluating the business case for MySAP
CRM.
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