Decision to adapt software now subject of an independent management investigation
icon Lindsay Clark
Thu 29 Jun 2023 // 08:30 UTC
Birmingham City Council is running parallel systems to compensate for the troubled implementation of an Oracle system which will suck in £46.5 million ($58.81 million) in additional spending in the current financial year.
The Council's Cabinet committee heard officials say this week that the council was running parallel systems to ensure its financial reporting was up to date, even though it went live with the Oracle finance system in April last year.
Roger Harmer, Liberal Democrat councillor, told the Cabinet meeting that not all the additional spending was going towards fixing the Oracle system.
"The briefing I had was more about ensuring that the statutory reports the council has to give are given by… running parallel systems to ensure that all the financial reports are made. It is not actually fixing Oracle," he said.
Ewan Mackey, deputy leader of Birmingham Conservatives, said some suppliers to schools had received duplicate payments, while other had not been paid, owing to problem with the system.
Brigid Jones, cabinet member for finance, said the council had employed a dedicated officer to help schools deal with the issues they faced because of the Oracle implementation.
Birmingham City Council is the largest local authority in Europe by population, with around £3.4 billion ($4.2 billion) in revenue per annum. It has been struggling with the project to replace SAP with Oracle's Fusion cloud system to support core HR and finance functions since 2018. The ERP project was reviewed in 2019, 2020, and again in 2021, when the total implementation cost for the project was put at £38.7 million ($47.8 million), "doubling the cost," Robert Alden, Conservative leader, told the council in April.