Agenda item

Purpose of the item: To provide an update on the Digital Business & Insights programme

Witnesses:

Anna D’Alessandro, Director of Corporate Finance

Andrew Richards, DB&I Programme Director

Becky Rush, Cabinet Member for Resources and Corporate Support

Key points raised during the discussion:

1.    The DB&I Programme Director outlined the progress of the Digital Business and Insights (DB&I) programme to date. The programme was on-track to meet the 1 June 2021 and 1 December 2021 ‘go-live’ dates for phases one (Proactis source-to-contract) and two (Unit 4 enterprise resource planning (ERP)) of the programme respectively. The programme was in a good position on business change and was at the stage of signing off organisation impact assessments. Readiness assessments had been completed, and the programme was in the process of setting up local business change governance. Moreover, the programme was reaching out to external groups that would be impacted by the programme and the software changes, such as schools.

2.    The Programme Director continued to explain that a training needs analysis for each stakeholder group on phases one and two of the programme would be completed by the end of March 2021. Training content would then be developed over the following months. Another area of focus was preparing for testing of the new systems. User acceptance testing of the new ERP system would be conducted from July 2021, including testing of the payroll systems not only for Surrey County Council, but also for external customers who used the same payroll system.

3.    The Programme Director stated that some permanent Council staff with relevant skills would be seconded to roles within the programme. The secondments would start at the beginning of April 2021, leaving time for these staff to prepare for the bulk of programme activity in June and July 2021. An external specialist consultancy had been employed to work on integration; there were about 30 integrations that needed to be tested. Work on integration was going well and would continue until the end of July. Finally, the invitation to tender for the archiving solution would be published tomorrow (19 March 2021); suppliers had been notified earlier that week. Procurement for the archiving solution would continue until the end of May 2021, when the Council expected to award the contract, with a target go-live date for the archiving solution of February 2022.

4.    A Member asked what was being done to mitigate risk 2 outlined in the risk profile in the report (namely, the risk of poor quality of the design solution if the right business representatives were not engaged effectively). The Programme Director replied that it was important to ensure that there were both the right business representatives and continuity in the people involved over time. To mitigate this risk, meetings had been coordinated well in advance in order to ensure people were available from session to session, and efforts had been made to avoid any differences between people involved session-to-session.

5.    A Member enquired what was being done to mitigate risk 4 (the risk of conflicting interests within the organisation with differing objectives and a lack of consensus). The Programme Director responded that the emphasis on developing a vision and objectives had worked well and culminated in the programme board. This enabled a clear setting forth of the ambition of the programme in the Cabinet report, for example. Since the initial stages, only a small number of change controls had been required, and only about four of these had had a cost attached, which was positive. The programme was now at the stage whereby action was being taken and changes enacted, and so now the business change team was working with parts of the organisation to reconfirm that concrete actions should be taken. There was no evidence that this would be a problem, but it was an aspect that needed to be managed properly.

6.    A Member requested more information on the early establishment of the Surrey County Council Benefits Governance Board, which was listed in the report as one element of the mitigation of the risk ‘that the programme is unable to demonstrate sufficient measurable benefits’. The Programme Director said that the full business case for the DB&I programme did not include cashable efficiency savings, but that the financial and non-financial benefits had been captured during the design phase. Details on these benefits were on-track to be brought back to the programme board by 6 April for the board’s feedback and endorsement. The next step would be to quantify and assign benefit owners to be responsible for the delivery of those benefits. The delivery of the benefits would be managed by the Corporate Benefits Governance Board, where the DB&I benefits would be tracked in aggregate with benefits realised by other corporate programmes. The Member thanked the Programme Director for his response and asked that the Select Committee be kept updated on benefits of the programme in future reports.

Chris Townsend joined the meeting at 10:42am.

7.    With regards to risk 9 (‘that there will be a drop in the level of service from Business Operations for the Council and other customers during the implementation and early life of the new system’), which was rated ‘high risk’ pre-mitigation in the report, a Member asked whether additional business resource required for user acceptance testing, implementation and early life support had been included in the original budget or was additional. The Programme Director confirmed that this would be met by the original budget. The Member said this was good news and enquired what rating the Programme Director would give to risk 9 now that the risk was at a post-mitigation stage. The Programme Director stated he would now reduce the risk rating to low/medium.

8.    A Member noted that there was a significant financial risk that the implementation of the ERP system could slip into the start of 2022, resulting in the Council incurring the full cost of SAP (the current ERP system) support and maintenance for 2022, amounting to £700,000. What was the progress to date and how realistic was a contingency plan if the Council failed to meet the deadline for shifting to the new system? The Programme Director explained that the current view was that the programme was on-track to go live on 1 December 2021. Progress on this would be continually monitored. Once the first cycle of user acceptance testing had been conducted in July, the programme’s position would be clearer and a focused review would be conducted to determine the next steps. Any decision taken would incorporate the pros and cons. A contingency plan would involve reaching out to the market to engage third party suppliers and explore whether a short-term offer would be attractive to them; it was unlikely this would be any later than 1 February 2022. This was a potential option that needed to be evaluated, but had not yet been explored in detail, because the Programme Director was confident the 1 December 2021 go-live date would be met. The Member enquired how much the short-term support would cost if it was found to be necessary. The Programme Director said that a figure on this could not be given at present; a request for information (RFI) would have to be published first as part of the procurement process, after which prospective providers could present their offers. There might be some challenges due to the short duration of a contract. However, it was not currently expected that this option would be necessary.

9.    A Member noted that the Council was currently upgrading its pensions system, which related to the new ERP system, particularly with regards to payroll. Attention should be paid to ensuring that the two upgrades were integrated. The Programme Director agreed to raise this with the integration lead and to feed back to the Select Committee to confirm the pensions upgrade and DB&I programme were integrated.

Actions/further information to be provided:

1.    The DB&I Programme Director to include an update on the delivery of DB&I programme benefits in the next DB&I report to the Select Committee; and

2.    The DB&I Programme Director to raise integration of the upgraded pensions service and the DB&I programme with the integration lead and confirm to the Select Committee that these are integrated.