Decision details

This report considers the tenders received for a new finance system for Fareham Borough Council and recommends an award of contract to the winning tenderer.

The Council’s current finance system, Advanced eFinancials, is one of the Council’s fundamental corporate systems and was first implemented in 1994. It is used across all Council services for purchasing and income collection activities as well as budget monitoring and for the production of the Council’s accounts.

The system’s functionality is generally outdated and ineffective compared to modern IT systems and a lot of the Council’s finance processes are paper-based and time consuming with duplication of effort and scope for human error.

The system runs on an Oracle platform hosted inhouse by the ICT service. The ICT strategy is to move to SQL Server based databases and systems wherever possible as they can be better supported by ICT, or Cloud SaaS (Software as a Service) systems where the support is provided by the vendor.

A project team has therefore been carrying out soft market testing of what other functionality and systems are available. A considerable amount of work has also been carried out to capture what is important to the organisation and its customers in relation to the financial processes being used. This has led to the Council running a procurement tender for a new finance system.

An OJEU Open Tender Procedure in accordance with the Public Contracts Regulations 2015 was used for this tender.

The report provides the Executive Member with information regarding the tenders received and seeks an award of contract for 5-years with the option to extend for a further 5 years.

RESOLVED that the Executive Member for Policy and Resources agrees to award the contract to the winning tenderer, as set out in the confidential appendix A, subject to the agreement of terms and conditions.