The challenge

Walsall Metropolitan Borough Council have been using a heavily customised Oracle e-business suite for finance and purchasing, since its original implementation. It was no longer considered to meet their needs. In addition to Oracle EBS, Walsall had several other solutions for HR and Payroll business processes, including: Midland HR iTrent, Talentlink, and Learning Pool.

Walsall decided to undertake a migration to Oracle Cloud to move to an ERP solution instead of having separate ‘best of breed’ solutions. The Council engaged Socitm Advisory to advise on the route to market that Walsall had decided on and to procure its future ERP Cloud solution. The engagement consisted of the completion of the pre-procurement preparation phase, including the production of the functional specification, alongside end-to-end procurement support. On the ERP Cloud programme, we worked in partnership with Evosys and Egress.

The approach

We produced the first draft of the procurement suite of documents. Once approved, the documents were published through the CCS Framework – RM1042. Socitm Advisory supported the Council through the entire procurement process.

We worked with the Council to approve a detailed programme plan, that included:

  • Tender stage
    • Drafting of the procurement suite of documents, including evaluation guidance of staff
    • Advice of public procurement including best practice guidelines
    • Support through the clarification process
    • Project management support (including tracking programme deliverables)
  • Evaluation stage
    • Organising the moderation sessions
    • Acting as the moderator through the moderation sessions
    • Providing an assurance role through this stage of the process
    • Technical evaluation of the supplier’s bids received
  • Tender assessment stage
    • Ongoing support to supplier technical demonstrations
    • Advice on the evaluation of software products
    • Support through the final moderation sessions including wrap up sessions
  • Awards stage
    • Support drafting the successful and unsuccessful letter for suppliers
    • Developing the Final Business Case (FBC)
    • Attending key meetings with the programme’s sponsor, co-sponsors and councillors
    • Overseeing of the Council’s cabinet timetable and expediting reviews and sign-off of the FBC

Additionally, Walsall utilised our Business Change Team to realise the cultural and behavioural changes associated with the technical solution design.

The outcome

Walsall achieved a successful procurement, without challenge, through the CCS Framework – RM1042. They awarded a contract on a 5 + 2-year term to Softcat as the prime supplier with Evosys as the Implementation Partner, and Egress as the Data Migration Specialists. This project gave Walsall a trusted partner, who flexibly responded to the needs of the programme throughout the lifecycle.