Earlier this month, councillors had a possibility to debate the previous and present points confronted by Birmingham Metropolis Council in its implementation of an enterprise useful resource planning (ERP) system from Oracle.
The council’s extraordinary assembly, held on 11 March, gave council members an opportunity to voice their considerations following publication of a Grant Thornton report in February what went incorrect with the implementation of the Oracle ERP system. Work will proceed on the reimplementation, which is because of go stay in April 2026. Throughout the assembly, council members sought reassurance that this deadline wouldn’t slip.
Councillor Albert Bore famous that the council beforehand ran a 10-year three way partnership with Capita to run an SAP ERP system. This led to 2018, when the council took the choice to insource its IT perform and transfer to a cloud-based Oracle ERP system.
Throughout this time, Bore stated IT experience was held within the council, however what adopted was, in line with Bore, “a predictable debacle”.
A whole mess
Councillor Meiron Jenkins, who has earlier expertise of implementing ERP techniques, stated: “Implementing ERP techniques has been my life for 40 years and over that point I’ve seen some fairly dangerous implementations, however this actually is a one-off. It’s actually exceptional what a whole mess you manufactured from implementing it.”
The findings of the Grant Thornton value-for-money report into the Oracle ERP venture spotlight critical governance considerations, lack of possession amongst senior executives and a tradition that deterred damaging considerations being raised.
As Jenkins factors out, if senior managers aren’t carefully concerned within the particulars of an ERP implementation, the possibility of it going incorrect will increase considerably. “And that’s what’s occurred right here,” he stated, referring to the Birmingham Metropolis Council’s implementation of Oracle to interchange SAP.
Jenkins stated that in 2020 he collaborated on a scrutiny inquiry into the Birmingham Metropolis Council Oracle venture earlier than it started. “We made some suggestions. If solely these suggestions had been adopted, so many of those issues would have been prevented,” he stated.
In his 2020 letter to councillors in regards to the forthcoming Oracle venture, Jenkins included a hyperlink to an article masking nice ERP disasters. “I put it in as a result of I believed [they could] learn these nice ERP disasters – and these have been massive corporations, run by skilled senior folks, who had gone so badly incorrect.”
In addition to failings of senior administration, some councillors raised considerations that the exterior professionals paid to audit the council ought to have put extra emphasis on the dangers being carried by the council as a result of its ERP implementation.
Questions on exterior audit
One councillor stated to Laptop Weekly: “Had been the senior executives not being truthful to the exterior auditors? I feel this is without doubt one of the issues we have to perceive as an organisation.”
Councillor Lee Marsham stated: “We should always all be alarmed at this report as a result of, no matter our political leanings, we have been all misled. Within the spirit of cross-party working, I wish to reward councillor Jenkins who requested the fitting questions within the audit committee and was informed by very senior officers, ‘Nothing to see right here’.”
Marsham additionally praised the work of councillor Paul Tilsey as vice-chair of the audit committee, and the earlier audit committee chair, councillor Fred Grindrod, who he stated “challenged officers and was informed repeatedly that he was incorrect to take action”.
Marsham identified that in March 2023, the exterior auditor reported that Oracle was not a major danger. “Our exterior auditors [Grant Thornton] final week revealed to the audit committee for the primary time that they weren’t informed the total information both. Might our exterior auditor, a company accomplice, have achieved extra?” he requested.
Tilsey went additional, saying: “I’ve learn the report very, very fastidiously. There’s a criticism I must make of Grant Thornton, as a result of within the report it says fairly clearly that senior officers weren’t responding to Mark [Stocks] and his workforce.” Shares, who works for Grant Thornton, is Birmingham Metropolis Council’s exterior auditor. “I feel I might need taken some very affirmative motion in that sort of scenario,” Tilsey added.
Six months after the March 2023 auditor’s report, there seems to be a really clear indication that the auditor was searching for better readability on the venture and the reimplementation. September 2023’s exterior auditor’s report ready by Grant Thornton lists a statutory advice that the council ought to set a goal date for the completion of the “protected and compliant” section of the Oracle implementation. “We contemplate that this ought to be accomplished by 30 November 2023,” the auditor said.
One other statutory advice said: “The council ought to contemplate the capability of its senior employees to take care of the Oracle ‘protected and compliant’ and ‘reimplementation’ phases alongside the opposite competing pressures.”
The most recent auditor’s report recommends that the council guarantee extra sources are offered to make sure the “essential venture” is accomplished on the earliest alternative. “This will embrace extra inside or exterior IT capability and functionality. In the long run, the council might want to be sure that it rebuilds its personal IT capability and functionality,” the report said.
A spokesperson for Grant Thornton UK stated: “We notice the feedback and questions raised by councillors in relation to our report within the public curiosity; nonetheless, we don’t agree with a few of these feedback and imagine they stem from a basic misunderstanding of the accountability of auditors amongst sure council members. As has beforehand been defined to the councillors, auditors aren’t accountable for the implementation of council monetary techniques – that is the accountability of the officers and members.”
The Nationwide Audit Workplace code of follow units out the obligations of auditors – as Grant Thornton notes, there isn’t any requirement to audit the implementation of economic techniques.
“We notice that different councils implement monetary techniques yearly with out auditor involvement and with out the extent of failure that has occurred at Birmingham,” the spokesperson stated. “Given the earlier failure to successfully implement Oracle, we proceed to watch the scenario and whether or not we must always take the weird step of finishing up an audit of the reimplementation.”
Nonetheless working late
Throughout the extraordinary assembly, councillor Jaime Scott said that Birmingham’s revenue administration system (IMS), which is without doubt one of the most basic elements of how the council understands its monetary place, is working behind its authentic timescale for implementation.
Beforehand, Grant Thornton auditor Shares mentioned the workaround the council had put in place with its current financial institution reconciliation system (BRS). When requested in regards to the delays of the brand new IMS, Shares stated: “You may’t go stay till as a result of you might have your workarounds for the present money system. You must delay till you’re prepared and we actively encourage all our purchasers to delay till all of the testing is finished,” including that until the system is working correctly, “all you’ll be doing is changing one dysfunctional system with one other”.
Chatting with Laptop Weekly, Scott stated that after a dialog with the Oracle venture lead, the Oracle implementation workforce is assured the IMS can be prepared. However, he added: “We have to hold a examine on it to make sure there’s not any additional slippage, as a result of if these items slip, we may simply then be into Christmas.” Such a slippage may impression the brand new provisional stay date of April 2026.
