London Borough of Havering Targets Saving US$23.5 Million in Five Years with Move to Managed Cloud Services
 
 

London Borough of Havering Targets Saving US$23.5 Million in Five Years with Move to Managed Cloud Services

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London Borough of Havering is the third-largest borough in Greater London, with a population of 220,000 and an area covering 27,742 acres, of which almost half is green space. Its administrative authority is Havering Council, which provides education, housing, waste management, transportation, leisure facilities, and many other services to the borough’s residents and visitors.

In 2010, Havering Council needed to find a way to reduce expenditures by US$24.5 million annually to compensate for an annual 7.1% reduction in funding received from the Department of Communities and Local Government. This reduction was part of a national program of central government spending cuts designed to reduce the United Kingdom’s structural deficit by US$7.8 billion each year until 2015.

In a bid to preserve funding levels for vital front-line services, such as social care and children’s services, Havering Council looked for ways to cut back-office administrative costs. It reviewed its IT footprint and identified major opportunities to rationalize its software applications and supporting infrastructure. These opportunities were incorporated into Havering 2014, a four-year transformation strategy that aims to increase efficiency and eliminate unnecessary expenses across all of the council’s services.

As part of the program, the council chose to move its core applications for finance, human resources (HR), payroll, and procurement from its own premises to an on-demand model, managed and delivered by Oracle Cloud Services. This move involved consolidating Havering Council’s legacy, heterogeneous applications onto a single instance of Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1. The council projects that resulting efficiencies will result in saving US$23.5 million over five years―representing a fourfold return on the project’s cost of US$4.7 million and a significant contribution to Havering’s overall savings target.

 
 

 
 

Challenges

A word from London Borough of Havering

  • “Our transformation has enabled us to save money in back-office functions and protect crucial front-facing services for residents. At the same time, we freed up time for our organizations, so they can respond to residents’ needs more effectively. We could not have achieved so much in such a short time without the support, professionalism, and dedication of Oracle Cloud Services.” – Andrew Blake-Herbert, Group Director of Finance and Commerce, London Borough of Havering

  • Save US$24.5 million every year through 2014 to compensate for reduced central government funding for local government organizations as mandated in the treasury’s 2010 comprehensive spending review
  • Preserve funding for front-line services, such as social care, child protection, housing, and public transport, by reducing back-office administrative and IT infrastructure costs
  • Improve financial decision-making by extending visibility into Havering Council’s financial position, including cash flow
  • Reduce routine administrative work enable employees to focus on delivering better service to citizens and businesses
  • Create a solid, cost-effective IT foundation for future implementations of new, cost-saving, self-service applications for employee recruitment and supplier management
  • Complete the back-office transformation quickly to capitalize on lowered costs and gained efficiencies as early as possible

Solutions

Oracle Product and Services

  • Realized US$23.5 million in savings over five years by replacing disparate legacy systems, including existing Oracle E-Business Suite modules, custom applications, and a third-party HR system with a single, integrated instance of Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 delivered in a managed cloud services model
  • Saved US$2.3 million in the first year by decommissioning internally managed applications, middleware, databases, and hardware, and having the new Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 environment managed entirely by Oracle Cloud Services in a private cloud based at Oracle’s data center
  • Enabled managers to make better financial decisions regarding public service planning, budgeting, and cash flow management, by implementing Oracle Business Intelligence Suite, Enterprise Edition to produce financial status reports just days after each month’s end, rather than the several weeks required with the previous system
  • Improved service by offering IT support from Oracle Cloud Services on a 24/7 basis to front-line employees, such as social workers who do not always work traditional office hours
  • Reduced administrative workload by replacing cumbersome, paper-based processes with electronic processes―for example using Oracle Internet Expenses to enable employees to submit expense reports online with automatic routing to managers for approval
  • Enabled rapid and effective adoption of Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 applications by using Oracle User Productivity Kit to deliver standardized training to end-users
  • Completed the migration to Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 On Demand in just 10 months, leveraging the expertise, dedication, and client focus of Oracle Cloud Services professionals

Why Oracle

Carl Collins McCarthy, program manager for internal shared services at Havering Council, was already a fan of Oracle Cloud Services, having been a customer in a previous role with the United Kingdom Environment Agency. He was convinced of Oracle Cloud Services’ ability to significantly reduce costs by removing the need to install, manage, and support a complex software and hardware infrastructure, internally.

Oracle Cloud Services also offered 24/7 support to all users as a standard, an improvement over the legacy environment that provided IT support only during office hours. It also provided the reassurance of Oracle experts managing a stack of Oracle software and hardware, with all of the associated best practices, governance processes, and performance-enhancing tuning.

“We are very happy with Oracle Cloud Services. Its outstanding service and robust governance, processes, and controls make it well worth the investment,” Said Carl Collins McCarthy, program manager, internal shared services and Oracle competency center, London Borough of Havering.