Modernisation puts paid to mainframes

Stoke on Trent City Council project manager, Paul Atkins

Faced with a pressing need to update its e-procurement and financial management systems, Stoke-on-Trent City Council recently gave systems integrator Civica the task of implementing a four-year, £1m modernisation programme.

Council project manager Paul Atkins said the existing mainframes hosting the local authority’s ledger, creditor and debtor systems were over 20 years old and long due a refresh.

“They are slow, inefficient and do not provide the management information that a modern council requires, like being able to report on expenditure, income or output at a neighbourhood level. Also, the skills and expertise needed to run them are diminishing,” Atkins said.

The update will progress in two phases, the first involving the replacement of the physical systems by March 2008, followed by an update of the business processes, which should be completed by December the same year.

A Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN) built on EMC equipment will be installed, with dual failover between two database servers. Three application servers will handle load balancing, and the council will use Citrix for thin-client application presentation.

Based on Civica’s Authority Financials and eProcurement systems, the implementation builds on the initial stage of the authority’s drive for modern procurement by integrating with the I&DeA eMarketplace procurement system. This automates all purchasing, payment and debt recovery operations involving the authority’s suppliers and creditors, and will be used by up to 1,000 council staff.

The contract was arranged through the Office of Government Commerce (OGC) regulatory and contractual framework procurement process, under which Civica was already approved.

“There was a mini competition, and we looked at several different solutions based on the OGC framework, including Fujitsu. We chose Civica because it knew our current systems better than the others and was best placed to migrate the required information off the old mainframes. Plus they were effectively the lowest cost,” Atkins said.

While he does not envisage the systems upgrade presenting too much of a challenge, Atkins knows that staff training and modernising the business process is likely to take longer. “The challenge comes in changing business behaviour, but I think that is something we are well equipped to take on. It will not all happen before the next financial year, but we will continue to improve over time,” he said.

Atkins expects return on investment on the systems upgrade within three years, and expects further savings going forward.

“The revenue costs of running those mainframes through a service contract are £400,000 a year alone. When we upgrade the finance system we can pull out of those agreements. And that is before you look at the internal efficiencies made possible through better procurement, streamlined purchase-to-pay processes and financial planning,” Atkins said.
‹ www.civicaplc.com/uk