Logica wins £7.4m shared services contract

Nottinghamshire County Council signs five-year deal with services provider

Business and technology services company Logica has been awarded a contract to transform the business support processes of Nottinghamshire County Council.

The contract is worth £7.4m and will run for five years.

Mike Harounoff, business development manager at Logica, explained that the contract aims to implement an internal shared service within the council, bringing together the functions of HR, payroll, procurement and finance.

"We're implementing SAP ERP to replace existing systems, such as Cyborg, which the council uses currently for HR functions," said Harounoff. "Systems will go live for all functions in October 2011, that's the first phase."

The second phase of the project will be the rollout of payroll to schools across the county. There will also be added functionality around business reporting, which will go organisation-wide.

The two phases will be delivered over 18 months, and then there will be support for the remainder of the five year period.

Once it gets the internal shared service in place the council will be looking to see how it can extend that service to the wider public sector within the county, for example the emergency services. After that it will consider sharing with other larger authorities.

Savings will come from job cuts, increased efficiency and a reduction of duplication.

"Technology is the enabler to make the savings. But if you don't have the right processes in place, you won't make those savings. The return on investment will come from the way in which the service is delivered," Harounoff said.