|
minute read
Sopra Steria Next has worked with a large public body since 2021 to successfully transition to an Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution. This transition has successfully transformed their operations, standardising functionality and creating a consistent user experience in Human Resources (HR), Finance and Procurement for over 20,000 users across 31 organisations.
As the client-side partner and a trusted adviser we worked collaboratively with this organisation. Together, we helped transform business operations and enabled stakeholders across the public sector to realise the benefits of a modernised, sustainable platform for corporate shared services delivery.
Background
The organisation wanted to embrace an ‘Adopt not Adapt’ design principle to their technology solution. They sought to avoid customisation and maximising re-use. This approach enabled them to establish a unified operating environment aligned with Government Standards. Achieving this required them to bridge technical gaps between existing processes, and the standard ERP Oracle Fusion functionality whilst still maintaining operational sustainability.
The challenges
The programme was complex, with a large team to manage made up of various entities including staff, multiple suppliers, contractors and the 31 customer organisations. Varying levels of knowledge, skills, and capabilities amongst the team presented challenges in the delivery of this significant transformation programme, and support was needed to ensure the implementation was business-driven and value-focused rather than IT-led.
A lack of clear understanding of the existing touchpoints between different functional areas meant designing an end-to-end service could lead to misaligned processes, inefficiencies, and a fragmented user experience. Legacy HR and finance data quality was poor, held across multiple systems and was incompatible with the new system. There was no clear approach on how to cleanse, map, validate and migrate this data. With many internal and external stakeholders to manage, and local ways of working that had evolved incrementally over time, addressing resistance to change and showcasing the benefits of the new technology to users was a key challenge.
This organisation and their user community needed external experience and support to fully leverage the technology investment made to achieve real business benefits.
Our solution
Sopra Steria Next embraced a genuine partnership approach with the client to deliver this large and complex programme. Our team brought its extensive experience and a large pool of expert resources including Subject Matter Experts, Business Change Managers, Business and Data Analysts and Test Managers. We also provided independent strategic advice based on our cross-government and shared services experience. We supported the client’s leadership teams with well-informed advice to make key design decisions at pace via collaborative workshops with process owners and operational end users.
Key areas of the program included:
- Acting as a ‘client adviser’: working in partnership with the client, its suppliers and user community to drive better decision making.
- End-to-end service design: shaping HR and Finance Processes in an Oracle Fusion implementation, aligned to the Government Shared Services Strategy and Global Design Principles.
- Driving business change: A people-centric approach to support over 20,000 users for change across HR, Finance and Procurement.
- Transforming legacy data for Oracle Fusion: establishing new data models and frameworks.
We empowered the client teams to make better informed decisions through critical challenge and options analysis. We supported the user community through prioritisation and design decisions and helped set up change boards to set up the right conditions for analysis, challenge and approvals.
The Sopra Steria Next team implemented a people-centric approach and practical techniques including impact and readiness assessments, transition plans and benefits management to ensure change cutover plans were locally owned and centrally coordinated.
Frequent stakeholder engagement and communications were established, alongside business change interventions which included co-design workshops, demos, and all-staff familiarisation sessions. This enabled users to plan for changes to roles and processes while building enthusiasm for the benefits and boosting adoption.
The team delivered change through continuous adaptation and adoption, providing focused information sessions, Q&A’s and knowledge transfer to empower operational teams to adopt standardised ways of working.
‘Model Office’ environments were set-up to help process owners and users to understand the new technology, visualise the transformation journey and familiarise themselves with the future operational state.
The benefits
Through working with the Sopra Steria Next team, the organisation was able to benefit from:
- Empowered senior leadership teams and design authorities to make informed decisions instilling confidence and reducing technical risk.
- Designed robust and efficient processes, using evidence-based decisions to ensure that the processes we designed were robust, efficient, user-centric and aligned with best practice, such as the Global HR Design Principles. Moving forward, this will reduce operational costs and enable continued realisation of benefits of the new technology.
- Reduced risk to business operations, so stakeholders were able to manage the changes to their business operations locally and embrace a culture of continuous improvement.
- Reduced cutover time and improved data accuracy, giving the client the platform to successfully migrate a clean set of data into Oracle Fusion.
- Enhanced financial consistency, unifying multiple cost centre hierarchies buried in legacy systems into a single, coherent Chart of Accounts. This consolidation will simplify reporting, improve data consistency and provide integrity across the client and its customer organisations. It will also enable better decision-making and compliance with regulatory requirements such as the Government Functional Standard.
- Delivery of improved, modern and efficient Shared Services for users by adoption of Government standard processes, with customisations for unique scenarios.
Using a variety of online survey and data gathering tools, we regularly captured adoption metrics from users across the programme – increasing the frequency and analysis as we approached go-live. In the run up to go-live between May and September 2024, our business change interventions helped raise confidence from users in their ability to go live from 31% to 87%. The results show this made a major contribution to the overall operational readiness score rising from a 2/5 to a 4/5 star rating.
The Sopra Steria Next team supported the business and user community in their adoption of a modern IT platform and improved ways of working – a foundation for improved corporate shared services across the Public Sector.
If you’d like to understand more about the Sopra Steria Next approach to ERP Advisory and Shared Services implementation across a variety of markets and our unique ways of working, please contact Damian Almeida, Senior Consulting Manager, Sopra Steria Next, for more information.