Image source: istock.com/CaronB
Birmingham City Council has signed a new contract, valued at just under £10 million, with software supplier Oracle for professional services.
The agreement came into effect early last month and is set to run until December 2026, covering consulting, software development and support.
While there is little detail in the contract award notice, the new deal comes after long running problems with the implementation of a cloud based enterprise resource planning system from the company. This caused a doubling of projected costs from an original level of £19 million to £38 million by April 2023, and has been attributed as a major factor in the city council’s financial problems, which led to the issuing of a section 114 notice in September of last year.
Fixes and optimisation
Although the system went live in 2022, problems remained and just over a year ago the council’s cabinet approved a plan to spend another £46.5 million in rectifying the problems. This would begin with fixing urgent issues then optimising the original plan based on a management review.
According to a recent report on Birmingham Live, another relaunch has taken place but the council expects it to take another two years before it is working as it should. Its plan involves Oracle Consulting working ‘at cost’ to design and implement a proof of concept solution by March 2025.
