Agenda item

To renew and award a contract for the existing Oracle E-Business Suite software licences for the period 1 May 2022 to 30 April 2023.

Resolved:

1.1 That the Director of Finance be authorised to renew and award a contract for the existing Oracle E-Business Suite software licences for the period 1 May 2022 to 30 April 2023 at a cost of £330,730.

1.2 That the Director of Law and Governance and Monitoring Officer is authorised to sign any contract documentation in relation to the renewal of the Oracle software maintenance and license agreement as referred to in 1.1 above.

1.3 That any necessary exemptions be made to the Council’s Procurement and Contract Procedure Rules to enable the course of action referred to in 1.1 above to proceed.

Approval was sought for the Director of Finance to renew and award a contract for the existing Oracle E-Business Suite software licences for the period 1 May 2022 to 30 April 2023 at a cost of £330,730.

Furthermore, approval was sought to authorise the Director of Law and Governance to sign any contract documentation in relation to the renewal of the Oracle software maintenance and license agreement and that any necessary exemptions be made to the Council’s Procurement and Contract Procedure Rules to enable the course of action.

The Chair of the Safer Neighbourhoods and Active Communities Scrutiny Board questioned whether the tasks that would be performed by this multi-functional software would threaten jobs in the Council.

On behalf of the Cabinet Member for Finance and Resources, the Cabinet Member for Community Safety stated that the decision to upgrade to Oracle Fusion was made some time ago by Cabinet. The decision in this report was regarding the extension of licences for the existing system in order to allow time for the upgrade to be implemented. The original decision considered the cost to the council. With regard to the risk to jobs, the system was not intended to replace jobs. The plan was for the system to undertake more of the transactional work that was currently undertaken in order to allow staff time to be spent on tasks that can add more value and contribute towards the strategic improvements across the council.

Reason for Decision

The council was currently progressing a large-scale project to migrate from the Oracle E- Business Suite to a cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution, Oracle Fusion.

An exemption report was signed off to extend the Oracle EBS licences from 1 November 2021 to 30 April 2022 at a total cost of £218,148. This included additional HR invoices of £54,000 which were subsequently not required and therefore the actual cost was approximately £164,000. There was now a need to further extend this until 30 April 2023 in order to allow sufficient time for the project to be completed whilst ensuring adequate cover for vendor support, software maintenance updates and license compliancy. The cost of this was £330,730 and the renewals would be directly with ORACLE Corporate Limited.

The successful migration to a modern cloud-based ERP would enable the council to deliver key functions such as Finance, Human Resources, Payroll, and Procurement to effectively and efficiently support frontline services to deliver corporate objectives.

Alternative Options Considered

The migration to the Oracle Fusion solution could not be completed before 30 April 2022 therefore the council would need to continue to operate with the Oracle E-Business Suite. The council could continue to use the E-Business Suite without renewing licences and maintenance. However, remaining on unsupported software was an unacceptable risk to the council due to the loss of service updates and support patches which were required to ensure that the software operates effectively and in accordance with appropriate legislation.

Agreed:-

(1)     that the Director of Finance be authorised to renew and award a contract for the existing Oracle E-Business Suite software licences for the period 1 May 2022 to 30 April 2023 at a cost of £330,730;

(2)     that the Director of Law and Governance and Monitoring Officer is authorised to sign any contract documentation in relation to the renewal of the Oracle software maintenance and license agreement as referred to in Resolution (1) above;

(3)     that any necessary exemptions be made to the Council’s Procurement and Contract Procedure Rules to enable the course of action referred to in Resolution (1) above to proceed.