Council chooses Fujitsu for £6m e-government deal

Sandwell plans to meet the 2005 e-government deadline with a £6m implementation of and Oracle suite covering finance, purchasing, human resources and payroll.

Fujitsu Consulting is poised to complete the implementation phase of the seven year contract, based around the implementation of an Oracle e-business suite.

The metropolitan borough council expects to gain cost benefits through improved purchasing and the re-engineering of its business processes.The 15-month implementation began last year and is due to be completed by July.

Tina Nicholls, project manager at Sandwell Council, said in a statement: "Our original set-up was based on a number of ageing stand-alone, back office systems, most on a mainframe platform due to be decommissioned.

"The decision was made early on to use this opportunity to not only replace these systems with an integrated solution but to also modernise our working practices and offer extended capabilities like e-procurement."

The core financial, HR and procurement modules went live in April this year and 2,000 of the council’s 15,000 employees are using the system. Later in the summer, employees will have greater access and control over their data.

Future developments over the next year will add e-procurement functions and include the evaluation of customer relationship management (CRM) technology.