The London Borough of Bexley

How to become an "Excellent Council"

Bexley is one of thirty- two London Boroughs that together with the City of London Corporation make up the area of Greater London. Each year, the Government assesses each Borough for their ability to meet the needs of the citizens and communities they serve. The findings of these reviews are widely published by the Audit Commission in the Comprehensive Performance Assessment awards (CPA) for which Bexley has been rated as an ‘excellent Council’ in the first year ever, placing them in the top 15% of the new national league.

The Challenge

Success in the CPA awards is measured in a number of ways, not least by the number of e-Government targets that are met. Bexley take their e-Government obligations very seriously; there is a whole programme of projects that form the ‘Shaping Bexley’ initiative, the goal of which is to update the Borough and its systems to be ‘best of breed’. One of the highest profiles of these is the drive for e-Procurement, the consolidation of purchasing across the Borough, to capture commitment information and drive down prices. An unenviable job! .

The Solution

Before Bexley could make real inroads into their e-Government drive, they needed to update their systems and processes to the latest Oracle software.

Bexley needed help. The search began for an upgrade partner with a wealth of Public Sector experience and the technical capabilities to deliver their dream. What made things tougher is that the Bexley Project Manager is the Deputy Chairman of the Oracle Local Government User Group. This project was going to be tracked and reported on from the first embers of partner selection through to go live and beyond. Success meant praise all round, failure would be commercial suicide. Mark Smith, the Principal Project Manager for PDG said, “This was an important contract for us since it had such a finite deadline to meet. Whilst we had a very strong and supportive team to work with in the Isle of Man Government, one sponsor was aware of another Oracle implementation that had failed to deliver the benefits.“

What made things more difficult was the complexity of the project. Whilst striving to improve their systems and processes in the past, Bexley had made a large number of bespoke changes to their applications to enable them to meet the needs of the organisation. These bespoke software changes required evaluation against the latest version of the e-Business Suite and a decision needed to be taken as to which was the better solution; to upgrade the old bespoke code or to discard it in favour of new features in the core package.

PDG and Bexley worked methodically to evaluate each and every piece of bespoke code. In total, over 75 bespoke interfaces, reports and forms were updated, tested and accepted into the latest solution, all within the fixed price and scope of the project.

Success of a complex project is due to teamwork. The Bexley team worked in harmony with the PDG consultants to deliver a truly successful and very well received system. However credit must be given to Steria, the managed service provider to Bexley and the organisation that would go on to support the systems when the upgrade was complete. Steria and PDG worked hand-in-hand to ensure that the technical side of the project met expectations. Not only did Steria provide and commission a brand new server as a part of the project, but also they ably assisted PDG and Bexley by providing expertise and support as and when needed.

The Implementation

The Bexley team were determined that when they delivered the system to their 300 or so users, the functions and processes that they were asking them to adopt would have been rigorously tested and checked. The task was an exhausting one but the work paid dividends. When the system went live, the number of support calls dropped off rapidly. The users were so happy that some called up to thank the Bexley team for their new system, unheard of in this day and age!

Training is so often the thing that is overlooked – the project team are concentrating on the project, resolving issues and ‘meeting the business requirements’. Not so for Bexley. There was a separate user training programme, with each of the users invited to a series of upgrade training events where they were given a bespoke training manual tailored specifically for Bexley.

The Benefits

In a very high profile and extremely complex upgrade project, the project team worked tirelessly and with great attention to detail to ensure that the project was a success. This now gives Bexley a rock-solid foundation for moving forwards with the latest Oracle ‘Self Service’ software, an area where they are sure to drive out significant benefits and deliver improved services, and of course, maintain their 100% score for the performance of their core services, continuing to climb the national league.