East Sussex County Council is currently undergoing a system check after facing challenges with implementing Oracle Fusion as a replacement for SAP R/3. The council’s Cabinet revealed that the Management Back Office Systems (MBOS) Program, aimed at replacing core HR and finance systems, had not been launched as scheduled in November. The council has now confirmed that Oracle remains a suitable product for them and is conducting a new system check to inform next steps and reset program dates.
The council is under pressure to abandon the SAP system by 2027, as it will no longer be supported after that time. A report from November 2023 highlighted that the project had moved to red status due to the failure to achieve necessary objectives in Phase 2 of parallel payroll execution. The council had initially planned to go live with the new system in December 2022 and retire SAP by April 2023, but these plans were delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
East Sussex’s reliance on the SAP system, based on German vendor’s R/3 software, has further complicated the situation. The council now plans to replatform the system to a dedicated cloud environment by the end of 2023 to mitigate risks associated with the aging infrastructure. The report indicates that the current storage infrastructure used by SAP is outdated, with defective components that can only be replaced with refurbished parts. Replatforming to a cloud-based hosted environment is seen as a more reliable and cost-effective solution.
This struggle with transitioning from SAP to Oracle is not unique to East Sussex, as neighboring West Sussex has also faced budget increases and delays in its project to transition from SAP. Similarly, Birmingham City Hall, the largest local authority in Europe, has seen the cost of its project rise substantially from its initial plans. The council had to abandon expensive customizations and plans to reimplement Oracle in a more standardized manner.
Overall, the challenges faced by East Sussex County Council in implementing Oracle Fusion highlight the complexities and risks associated with transitioning from legacy systems to new technologies. The need to stay up-to-date with technology while ensuring a seamless transition is crucial for the efficient functioning of local authorities.
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https://www.theregister.com/2024/05/23/east_sussex_oracle/