Scottish Water is planning for the next phase of its IT development by agreeing a framework deal with Oracle for future purchases of business software.

The utility, which completed a £65m IT transformation project earlier this year, is taking out flexible options on Oracle middleware products that could be used to reduce complexity among its different applications.

‘The Scottish water industry works in four-year cycles,’ said human resources and business services director Mark Adderley.

‘Between 2002 and 2006 it has been all about IT rationalisation, 2006-2010 will be about consolidation and exploiting what we have already developed,’ he said.

‘We want to make the best use of what we have already bought, and making it work for us over the next few years.’

The IT transformation project, undertaken to meet a target set by Scottish water regulators, had to improve the utility’s efficiency by 40 per cent by 1 April 2006.

The project met this target, with annual savings of £18m, and was £1.2m under budget.

Rationalising IT platforms presents many challenges, says Butler Group analyst Teresa Jones. ‘Any large organisation, such as a water utility, is going to have lots of different applications based on lots of different platforms,’ she said.

‘But they need to think about why they want those systems to work together.’

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Further Reading:

• Utility combines three centres
• Utility signs £100m outsourcing contract
• Severn Trent to update asset control software