Coventry City Council & Unit4 Business World

In business for people.
Coventry City Council
& Unit4 Business World
ERP BEST PRACTICE CASE STUDY

In business for people.Page 2 Proprietary and Confidential
Public sector ERP
implementations
never go to plan
Coventry City Council Case Study2-Sep-15
Right?

In business for people.Page 3 Proprietary and ConfidentialCoventry City Council Case Study2-Sep-15
Coventry City Council implemented
UNIT4 Unit4 Business World ERP
achieving Return on Investment
(RoI) in under six months. It was
on time, under budget and hit key
objectives, so that the council
could to do more with less...
Wrong!

Coventry City Council provides
a wide range of services to
over 320,000 citizens
Its aim - to improve the city as
a place to live, work and play

However budgets were going down
as demand for services increased
2-Sep-15 Coventry City Council Case Study
£929
£874
£829
£791
£758
£717
300,000
310,000
320,000
330,000
340,000
£0
£200
£400
£600
£800
£1,000
2010 / 11 2011 / 12 2012 / 13 2013 / 14 2014 / 15 2015 / 16
6%
9%
12%
14%
17%
Funding per person Budget cuts since 2010 Population increase
PopulationFunding

To meet the
challengeit was time for transformation
Coventry’s finance department
launched ‘Money Matters’,
a programme which analysed all
end-to-end finance processes
and recommended areas of
improvement across the council.

Reduced operational cost
Increased consistency and ease of use
of working practices
More accurate financial information and
better decision making
Improved timeliness of financial info
Business continuity and sustainability
Culture of accountability and ownership
Improved governance and control
The ‘Money Matters’
initiative identified seven
areas we had to improve upon

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR - FINANCIAL
MANAGEMENT, REVENUES AND BENEFITS
COVENTRY CITY COUNCIL
B A R R Y H A S T I E

But there was a problem;
Coventry’s existing back
office finance system:
The heavily customised incumbent Oracle
solution was expensive to maintain and
offered little visibility of financial information
There were back office inefficiencies.
Something had to change, and it did…

Coventry City Council turned
to UNIT4 Business World ERP
to manage finance &
procurement
The council implemented finance
and procurement for 2,500 users
on time and under budget
Here are the key success factors >>>

SUCCESS FACTORS

SUCCESS FACTORS 1
Getting the vision
right upfront
Identifying the seven business
objectives early
Doing the maths:
Forecasting
Tracking
Measuring projected efficiencies

The project was going to be complex,
the technology touched almost
every part of the council
It received the attention it deserved, a
dedicated project team was assembled
and a comprehensive plan designed
2-Sep-15
SUCCESS FACTORS 2
Plan, plan, plan

TRANSFORMATION PROGRAMME
DELIVERY MANAGER
J O E S A N S O M
Getting the planning right set the foundation for the
future. We made sure we had the resourcing right before the
project kicked-off. We seconded dedicated professionals
with the right skills, knowledge of the business, and who had
existing relationships with the council’s
key services areas.
Coventry City Council Case Study

SUCCESS FACTORS 3
Realising it’s not all
about cost savings
Managing cultural change was the biggest
challenge. So Coventry involved individuals
from the departments from the start
It sought buy-in from the top; political and
operational leaders
It won hearts and minds, involving stakeholders in
the process, with workshops – implementing their
ideas (where strategic)
Focus was placed on communication – avoiding
nasty surprises
It provided training on new systems and processes
so the project would hit the ground running

SUCCESS FACTORS 4
Choosing flexible
technology
Local government operates many services in
one of the most regulated and diverse
sectors – the only certainty is that there is no
certainty. Coventry chose technology that
worked with an ever-changing environment.

DELIVERY MANAGER
J O E S A N S O M
The pace of change in local government is
breathtaking. We chose UNIT4 ERP because post-
implementation it could keep pace quickly,
cost effectively and with minimum
disruption to users.

In business for people.Page 15 Proprietary and Confidential2-Sep-15
SUCCESS FACTORS 5
Get the governance
model in place
The project team made sure
that at every level employees
knew their responsibilities
and who made decisions
This helped to speed up the
implementation and hit deadlines
Coventry City Council Case Study

For speed of deployment, and a faster
Return on Investment (RoI), Coventry
City Council used UNIT4’s Local
Government template; a methodology
that delivers standard local government
processes out-of-the-box
SUCCESS FACTORS 6
Standardise where possible
and localise where necessary

Here’s the implementation plan
RELEASE 1 RELEASE 2 RELEASE 3A RELEASE 3B RELEASE 4 RELEASE 5 RELEASE 6
Planning and
Installation
Solution Design Business Design Build and Development Testing Deployment
Transition
/ BAU
2 0 1 2 2 0 1 3
SEP OCT NOV DEC JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC
Agree
Contractual
Terms
Project
Launch
Planning
Solution Alignment
& Validation Workshops Build Coventry City Council ABW Client IST
Prep IST UAT Live Build Go-Live
Post
Go-Live
Support
Reporting Requirements Report Development
Data & Interface Audit Data Migration & Interfaces
‘To be’ Business Requirements
and Business Process Documented Business Change
CC Project Team Training CCC Test Team Training End User Training
- Preparation
End User Training
- Delivery
Benefit Quantification & Justification Benefit Realisation

The project has made a
hugely positive impact.
It’s helping to deliver
more, with less…

The tangible benefits
154
Return on
Investment
achieved in
£3.8
Efficiency
savings
to-date
£1.3m
Cost
days million

There is no dependency on expensive external consultants
£60,000
£0
Six months customised Oracle consultancy spend
£60,000
First six months UNIT4 consultancy spend
£0

The council’s external auditors
also judged the project a success
The project was going to be complex,
the technology touched almost
every part of the council.
It received the attention it deserved,
a dedicated project team was assembled
and a comprehensive plan designed


The Council has successfully implemented new key
financial systems during 2013/14 and avoided the many
pitfalls that can occur when making such
significant changes to IT systems.

And what about the employees?
UNIT4 Business World vs. Oracle

DELIVERY MANAGER
J O E S A N S O M
Six months in we would have expected
a downturn in sentiment towards any new
system that requires such a radically
different way of working. However
we found the opposite.

In business for people.Page 23 Proprietary and Confidential2-Sep-15 Coventry City Council Case Study
A N D R E W G R I C E ,
D E P U T Y D I R E C T O R O F F I N A N C E ,
U N I V E R S I T Y O F S O U T H A M P T O N
Quality
Reporting Clarity /
Understanding
Oracle Unit4 Business Worldvs.
3.92
3.92
3.63
4.12
3.8
Straight forwardness and
consistency of business process
Ease of use
Paper / filing
Value added
tasks
Clarity of task
Visibility
Year end
2.76
3.73
3.74
3.89
3.55
3.71
Respondent scored on a scale of 0 to 5 the extent to which they agreed. Each question was posed as a direct
comparison to the previous system and processes and so any response of 3 or above is assumed to be an
improvement, and any of 2 or below a step backwards. The baseline is therefore assumed at 2.5 for each question.
Quality of financial information

Accountability and ownership
Respondent scored on a scale of 0 to 5 the extent to which they agreed. Each question was posed as a direct
comparison to the previous system and processes and so any response of 3 or above is assumed to be an
improvement, and any of 2 or below a step backwards. The baseline is therefore assumed at 2.5 for each question.
Budget holder
accountability Budget holders able
to do more
Better equipped to
support
3.47
3.65
2.69

Change
is no longer feared

DELIVERY MANAGER
J O E S A N S O M
Speaking to a corporate manager in the
finance team they mentioned the desire to
move end of year reporting from June, to
May the next year. With the old system we
know that would have provoked organisation-
wide anxiety, now however we feel confident
we can manage the change
ourselves in house.

And of the seven original objectives?
Business Feature
(Project)
New chart of accounts)
Renationalisation
of budget holders
Review of business
processes)
Formalised and
implemented roles
and responsibilities
Culture change
End user training
Knowledge transfer
ICT system
rationalisation
Technical Feature
(UBW)
Fully integrated solution
New functionality
Cleansed data
Consolidated reporting
Self-service capability
Post implementation
agility (BLINCᵀᴹ)
Supported system
ERP functionality
Realisable Benefit
Uniform business processes
without workarounds
Real-time access to
information and report
Reducing purchasing spend –
particularly off-contract
Improved management
information
Improved customer
experience (debtors /
suppliers)
Increased competency and
confidence for staff
Reduced IT costs and simpler
upgrades
More automation and less
duplication
Consistent approach across
rev / cap / grants / assets
Seamless operation in FM,
P2P, AR
Improved job satisfaction
Governance, auditability,
transparency
Improved collection and
reduced bad-debt
Reduced
operational risk
Business benefit too
early to measure
Business benefit achieved
Benefit realised
potential for moreKEY:
PID Objective
Reduced
operational cost
Increased consistency
and ease of use of
working practices
More accurate financial
information and better
decision making
Improved timeliness
of financial info
Business continuity
and sustainability
Culture of accountability
and ownership
Improved governance
and control

In business for people.
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