Unit4 SaaS Contract

Tender description

The Unit 4 Agresso (Business World Enterprise Resource Planning) application is the system used by the entire council for the management of its finances. The application is essential IT infrastructure as it provides accounting functionality which enables budget allocation and management across the whole council. This award is lawful pursuant to Regulation 32 (2)(c) of the Public Contract Regulations 2015 insofar as is strictly necessary where, for reasons of extreme urgency brought about by events unforeseeable by the contracting authority, the time limits for the open or restricted procedures or competitive procedures with negotiation cannot be complied with, and in accordance with Regulation 32(2)(b)(ii) because competition is absent for technical reasons. Lot 1: The Unit 4 Agresso (Business World Enterprise Resource Planning) application is the system used by the entire council for the management of its finances. The application is essential IT infrastructure as it provides accounting functionality which enables budget allocation and management across the whole council. This award is lawful pursuant to Regulation 32 (2)(c) of the Public Contract Regulations 2015 insofar as is strictly necessary where, for reasons of extreme urgency brought about by events unforeseeable by the contracting authority, the time limits for the open or restricted procedures or competitive procedures with negotiation cannot be complied with, and in accordance with Regulation 32(2)(b)(ii) because competition is absent for technical reasons. The following details the justification for this: Unit 4 timing of announcements regarding product changes, coupled with a 12-month timeframe to switch solutions, creates the urgency of the situation. The system is an essential part of the councils IT infrastructure would have a detrimental effect of the running of the council services. Unit 4 have mandated the switch and withdrawn support of the onpremise solution. It will not be possible for the application and the data to be hosted on premise in the future due to the availability of support for third party hosting. The Council could not have foreseen these events and no other economic provider would be able to provide this service At the present time it would be impossible for the council to procure and implement an alternative economic operator to provide this service. This is because, the supplier will no longer support the current on premise software beyond December 2024 and council risks a non-supported financial system. Therefore it is key that the council upgrades to the cloud software so stability of provision is ensured over the next few years to allow proper consideration of the above mentioned aspects.