Oracle Cloud helps one source boost back-office service delivery for key clients

Founded in 2014 as a partnership between the London boroughs of Havering and Newham, one source is now one of the United Kingdom’s largest public sector shared services providers, with more than 25 clients. The company was looking to improve back-office service delivery for Havering and Newham, because both needed to modernize the services they provided to residents, business, and communities. The boroughs also sought digital transformations of their human resources, payroll, and finance functions.

The company’s legacy IT systems were heavily customized and not fully integrated, making them difficult and expensive to operate and maintain. HR and finance teams needed to log in to several systems to perform simple daily tasks, and managers did not have good visibility into departmental activities and needs.

In addition, recruitment was slow and often disjointed, with hiring teams frequently unaware whether staffing requisitions had been approved, either from a budget or organizational standpoint.

Another key goal was to reduce costs to allow councils to spend more on frontline services. Thus, the organization also wanted to introduce tighter financial controls as well as improve workflow and efficiency.

Support for one source’s legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) product was due to be discontinued. The licenses for its recruitment system were also coming to an end. The company’s two principal borough clients wanted to reduce costs and embrace smarter working practices to better support residents into the future. Havering and Newham decided to launch a joint project, moving core business functions to a cloud environment that would be shared between one source and its clients.

The company conducted a public tender process, assessing product quality, price, and technical fit for the organization and its customers. Key criteria included user experience, data accessibility, system security, scalability, and future-proofing. Ultimately, one source selected Oracle Cloud HCM and Oracle Cloud ERP as the best systems to meet the needs of the participating organizations.

By deploying Oracle Cloud HCM and Oracle Cloud ERP, one source delivered more efficient back-office operations, boosted agility, and significantly reduced costs for the London boroughs of Havering and Newham. The unified solution enabled the councils to build more productive and transparent services for more than 600,000 residents, and to rapidly scale to support communities into the future.

The shared cloud platform greatly supports the digital transformation aspirations of both councils and has simplified and automated day-to-day workflows and processes for HR and finance specialists. It also enables the 11,000 employees in Havering and Newham to work more efficiently. For example, workers can now use mobile phones to submit expenses, review performance goals, or book annual leave.

The HR team now has a single, modern, easy-to-use solution for managing all employees from hire to retire, whether they are full-time, part-time, apprentices, or contingency workers. This has substantially increased HR productivity and improved financial controls, both of which are critical for local governments.

The HR team has a complete overview of all council vacancies and can immediately see if they are pending or active, so time is not wasted recruiting for positions that are waiting for budget approval or subject to a hiring freeze. Vacancy management has been further improved by unifying Oracle Cloud HCM with Oracle Planning and Budgeting, which enables managers to more easily determine if recently vacated positions should be filled or removed to save costs.

Meanwhile, the boroughs significantly enhanced recruitment practices, increased transparency, and accelerated the hiring process using Oracle Recruiting. Workforce diversity agendas are easier to monitor and fulfill, as candidates are now asked for mandatory background information when submitting applications. Currently, the London Borough of Havering is using Oracle Recruiting to revamp its careers site and boost its employer branding.

Because of the unification with Oracle Cloud HCM, HR teams can convert successful candidates into employees, set up learning paths, and monitor probation periods effortlessly. The handoff to the performance function is smoother with Oracle Cloud Talent Management for performance management. Employee appraisals are simpler and adoption rates are higher. Now it’s far easier for managers and employees to set, monitor, share, and collaborate on goals. In addition, one source automated processes for administering 36 payrolls by implementing Oracle Payroll.

The company’s Oracle Cloud implementation is projected to save both boroughs considerable fees in licensing, hosting, and maintenance, while continued process automation will enable them to optimize staffing levels and achieve further cost reductions.

Oracle Partner Evosys was selected to help one source implement its integrated solution. The company had proven experience with Oracle Cloud deployments in the public sector. Evosys worked closely with one source and the two London boroughs to go live with both Oracle Cloud HCM and Oracle Cloud ERP in just nine months, despite the pandemic, when all program teams were working remotely during critical phases of the project.