IT overhaul raises council standing

Waltham Forest's three-year programme brings down costs and boosts return on investment

The London Borough of Waltham Forest is extending a programme to overhaul its IT infrastructure and improve its 72 per cent return on investment (ROI) rate.

The addition of customer relationship management (CRM), business intelligence (BI) and real estate and plant management applications will complement the three-year overhaul of the authority’s human resources (HR), payroll and procurement systems, which has improved the council’s official performance rating.

‘This programme has been the major contributing factor to moving us up the government’s Comprehensive Performance Assessment ratings, from 137th to 27th. Management and business process transformation has brought down costs,’ said Waltham Forest corporate services executive director Chan Badrinath.

The extended programme will be funded from existing savings and budgets.

Waltham started the overhaul in 2002 when it awarded a £12m, 10-year contract to provide hosted mySAP financials and eprocurement systems to service provider Logica CMG (Computing, 30 May 2002).

The authority also took on specialist HR software from supplier Pecaso, to provide local government tailored systems to the council’s 5,500 staff.

Nearly all up-front costs were covered by the decommissioning of legacy systems, and from efficiency and productivity gains realised as a result of processes implemented along with the new systems.

‘With costs of £8m, we have released £14m in associated savings, which gives us our ROI by taking in the remaining £6m in savings and efficiencies,’ said Badrinath.

A study of the project carried out by researcher IDC states: ‘The council attained an ROI of 72 per cent over five years, and a payback on its investment within 18 months of implementation.’

These savings were achieved through the SAP implementation, which consolidated the borough’s disparate legacy and ageing mainframe environments.

The programme integrated 20 different IT systems handling fragmented procurement and finance operations.

‘In replacing the core corporate information system we also wanted something that would co-exist with our legacy infrastructure. We decided not to go for another mainframe environment as the technical view was that it would not be fit for purpose,’ said Badrinath.

Installation of the SAP software, the first phase of the programme, was completed on time, and to budget.

‘We refused to have any of what I call “retro-fit”. We decided to change our business processes to fit the standard processes of the software, which contributed to the systems being completely robust from day one,’ said Badrinath.

Because mySAP is web-based it has allowed further efficiency gains by making the system more accessible, increasing the amount of flexible working available to staff, improving performance and productivity levels, says Badrinath.

And the decision to opt for managed services has allowed Waltham to mitigate the risk of such a large-scale change programme, and make use of Logica’s project management and up-to-date technology skills for maximum knowledge transfer.

‘Our IT function supports the network responsible for delivering the new systems, which is hosted by Logica at their own site. This increased our confidence in managing the environment,’ said Badrinath.

She says the next phase, involving CRM, will allow the borough to start improving the services provided to citizens, using data to better tailor services in time for the 2012 Olympics, where some events will be held in the area.