Programming services of packaged software products

Tender description

Ipswich Borough Council provides a range of services to the residents of Ipswich from refuse collection to sport and leisure facilities. The Finance team, based at the council headquarters in Grafton House, supports all aspects of service delivery through activities such as budget management, financial planning, procurement and payments to suppliers. This procurement will award a contract for consultancy services to improve the main council finance system, supporting a programme of business transformation. The Council targets completion of this project for the summer of 2019. Ipswich Borough Council (IBC) uses Unit4’s Agresso Business Works (ABW) suite for its finance and procurement functions. Whilst the core software is on a current release (Milestone 6), it is not used to its full potential and requires improvement. This is a major business transformation project for the Council, and in recognition of this, the Council has agreed a substantial budget the services, training and development required to deliver this transformation. The Council has already acquired the additional software licences required for this project. Requirements: The key areas identified for improvement are: 1) project costing and billing (currently not used) — to provide support for the Councils 100 000 000 GBP capital programme and to enable better management of the Council’s recreational events and commercial activities; 2) procurement (currently used lightly) — to provide a full procurement support to include self-service requisitioning and full contract management support; 3) reporting — to provide a comprehensive self-service reporting facility that is user friendly and allows real-time information to be provided to end-users, reducing the current burden on the Council’s internal finance team; 4) budgeting — to provide a robust budgeting facility which sets-out the Council’s budget with a 4-year horizon; 5) asset management — to provide the Council with a comprehensive asset management system, replacing a number of existing, non-ABW, asset management systems; 6) training and development of end-users and technical finance staff — to enable the Council (officers and in some instances members) to make best-use of the improved system and have an end-user community that is confident in its use of the system. In addition to the above requirements, the Council is keen to investigate whether any existing line-of-business applications (e.g. asset management, Servitor) could be replaced with ABW functionality. The Council envisages that this will be explored in a series of workshops with Council staff.