London councils tender bid for cloud-based finance system

Four-year framework notice will be accessible to all London authorities

The London authorities of Westminster, Hammersmith & Fulham and Kensington & Chelsea have issued a procurement notice for a cloud-based HR and payroll framework.

The framework notice will last four years and be part of a pan-London initiative called Project Athena. The project is looking to create a cloud-based operating model offering London authorities access to vanilla cloud solutions.

The provider must be able to support this approach and should look to increase efficiencies wherever it can.

The notice said: "The provider must have the ability to deliver and support a standard vanilla product with the ability to deliver extra services upon request."

The solution will manage the following: routine regular transactional finance processing; internal re-charges; budget monitoring; provision of access to a cloud-hosted on-demand financial system; migration of a subset of existing financial system data; and access to the financial system for internal strategic finance staff.

Currently, each of the three authorities uses a variety of service providers to supply different parts of these core services. Some are run and managed in house, while others are externally hosted but managed in house, and some are a combination of the above.

The three authorities will hold bidder days for informal discussions during the week commencing 11 July.