SAP rollout helps cut council costs
Birmingham transformation project overhauls back office
Birmingham City Council’s back-office systems are to be overhauled using SAP software as part of a huge transformation project intended to save £1bn.
The council signed a 10-year, £475m strategic partnership deal with Capita in April, creating Service Birmingham, a joint venture between the local council and the vendor.
Service Birmingham will replace the council’s legacy systems with a full suite of SAP software in 2007 to improve the effectiveness of its public service delivery.
‘We have a static resource base and are under pressure to provide more. The only way we can do it is with a transformational approach,’ said Brendan Arnold, director of corporate finance at Birmingham City Council.
The implementation will cover the entire SAP product set, including the business suite for finance, human resources, procurement, customer relationship management and its integration platform Netweaver, as well as independent software applications from SAP partners.
The software is intended to make the council’s services more efficient and more cost-effective, as well as offering citizens improved access to services, says Arnold.
‘For example, we will revolutionise purchasing across the city, using technologies such as e-procurement and e-tendering,’ he said.
‘It will change the experiences of the way people contact us, which is important because Birmingham is a multi-service authority providing services to more than a million people,’ he said.
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