IT services: consulting, software development, Internet and support

Tender description

Background. The University of Cambridge is a large collegiate organisation. It is comprised of 31 Colleges, over 130 departments organised into six schools, a central administration service and several additional Institutions reporting directly to the Council and General Board. The University is not campus based instead being distributed across over 50 buildings spread across the city of Cambridge. The University Information Systems (UIS) organisation provides a wide range of information and technology services that underpin research, teaching, learning and administration across the collegiate University. UIS works strategically with Schools, Faculties, Departments, Colleges and other institutions, in planning and delivering the future Information Service requirements of the University, progressively improving business processes, capabilities and information solutions that meet the University's needs. UIS was established in 2014 and is currently undertaking a change programme to integrate four predecessor organisations into a cohesive single organisation that places greater emphasis on customer focus, user engagement and experience, staff development, common reusable services, and information and security management. While the new ways of working will be implemented from January 2016, further work will continue in 2016/17 to develop improved working arrangements and information technology enablers. The Business Systems sub Committee set out a case to refresh the University's core ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems for the next five to ten years, as there was increasing evidence that the traditional landscape that ERP systems have operated within is changing significantly and the ERP suppliers are reacting to that change. The University must position itself to take full advantage of these changes (e.g. Cloud), to mitigate the risk as the suppliers change approach and to deliver more value for money from the ERP system investment. The University needs to assess its capability requirements both existing and future and develop a strategy for delivering these capabilities in ways that are efficient, effective and support the wider University goals. A project was initiated in February 2015 to develop an ERP Systems Strategy for the next 2 to 10 years that maximises the value to the University. Gartner were engaged to provide initial insight and advice on the scope of the project, market developments and an approach to delivery. The Discovery phase of the project has used a number of Gartner Toolkits and models which have been developed to assist in this area. Work is progressing on the Discovery phase of the project and consultations have been held with involved departments across the University. The work to date has focused on gathering the University's current and future capability needs in the areas currently served by the ERP systems. It is not currently intended that the work will extend to specific user requirements. The information gathered to-date is currently undergoing analysis. Annex 1 provides an overview of the scope of the current ERP strategy work, and the progress to date. This consultancy requirement has been triggered by the resignation of the individual who was leading the strategy project (who has now left the university). There remains a small project team in place that includes business analysis capability. We are also taking the opportunity to put in place an agreement that can be used to deliver other work packages that may be required to support development of the UIS organisation. Overview of ERP Strategy Refresh Project. Scope. The University services delivered by current ERP core products are: — Finance: Oracle e-Business Suite; — Student Lifecycle: Oracle PeopleSoft Campus Solutions; — HR: MidlandHR iTrent. The ERP strategy must include these services as a minimum requirement but should also consider further opportunities to introduce ERP services to other areas of the University that have been consulted as part of the Discovery phase: — Procurement; — Asset Management; — Estate Management; — Research Grant Applications; — Business Intelligence and Decision Support. Objectives. A plan was created in spring 2015, with the goal of achieving the following key objectives: 1) Increase the level of awareness within the University at senior levels of the current role of ERP systems, the current strategy for the ERP systems and the opportunities and challenges emerging from the changing landscape. 2) To review the desired University future outcomes from ERP systems building on the strengths of the existing systems and addressing the gaps. 3) To assess the challenges and opportunities for the University created by the changing landscape with the emergence of loosely coupled ERP system solutions replacing the traditional ‘monolithic’ ERP system solution. 4) To understand ERP system market developments and supplier roadmaps to examine their impacts on the University's ERP system strategy. To potentially carry out some limited technology evaluations. 5) To develop a strategy for Integration Management. How ERP systems or their components will pass information between each other. 6) To align the developing strategy for the provision of Management Information and Reporting Services with the refreshed ERP systems strategy. 7) To understand significant ERP System Strategy initiatives across the UK HE sector, focussing on Russell Group Universities. 8) To identify a number of possible scenarios and to rank each according to their whole life cost. 9) To define an ERP system strategy that supports the University's strategy, key business processes, information management needs, statutory and regulatory requirements and delivers value. This should include a summary of the desired ‘to be’ ERP deployment from multiple perspectives (e.g. occasional user, applicant, academic, administrator, student, ‘power user’ business intelligence analyst etc), a summary of the ‘design and capability drivers’ to achieve these outcomes, identification of alternative scenarios to meet the above criteria, ranking of the scenarios against the criteria, with an overall recommendation to be based on ‘Best Value outcome’ rather than pure cost minimisation.