City of Cardiff Council extends relationship with SAP for cloud migration project

Council hopes project will enable it to cope with £124m in budget cuts over the next three years as well as improve services

City of Cardiff Council has partnered with SAP in a project that will involve moving its IT systems into the cloud over the next three years.

The council hopes that the project will enable it to improve customer services, streamline processes and deliver significant cost savings. The project will be implemented by SAP and will support the council's 15,000-strong workforce across the majority of its functions as it prepares itself for £124m in budget cuts over the next three years.

According to Ross Maude, senior enterprise architect at City of Cardiff Council, the council did not look at other vendors for this transformation as it believed that SAP was "the ideal choice", partly because of its existing relationship with the German technology giant.

"We already had SAP CRM licences in place, which meant that by using SAP for Customer and HANA Cloud Platform our CRM system and backend platforms were easily integrated," Maude told Computing.

"Having a partner that can work with us every step of the way from concept to implementation to training is invaluable," he added.

The council's legacy on-premise IT system created obstacles for collaboration across different services and functions, particularly as many of the systems were not connected to each other. Maude said that as part of the project it is able to implement an integrated cloud-based solution that brings all of the council's systems together.

The project will kick-off with the creation of a digital self-service portal, which will enable residents to interact online rather than in-person, with the aim of reducing administrative costs.

"This autumn we're planning on delivering the first phase of our self-service portal, that will include a few applications that residents can use, then [we will] start rolling out more over the year," Maude said.

The portal will be integrated into the CRM system and backend platforms, meaning that the council has a consistent view of the customer journey between channels. In turn, Maude believes this will significantly reduce call handling times, improve customer satisfaction and allow the council to deliver better services.

Maude declined to reveal how much the contract with SAP was worth, but said that there was "definitely a business case behind this investment".

"After the first phase of this project is complete in autumn and all of the systems are working, we'll start to see greater savings emerge," he said.

The council will also use data analytics to drive business decisions. Currently, Maude said that the council was using analytics across emails, the web and telephony. However, in future the council plans to move towards a predictive analytics model whereby it can anticipate when it may have an influx of calls or whether more services are needed, such as rubbish collection during peak seasons or holidays.

Cardiff Council staff are currently undergoing training for the new SAP solutions, some of which is being provided by SAP, specifically around process integration and HANA cloud portal training.

When Computing asked whether the council needed fewer staff as a result of the transformation Maude said: "This project is more about increasing productivity and will allow our staff to work smarter and more efficiently to deliver better services for our growing population."

The council has already started to implement these solutions and aims to complete the rollout by 2018.