Who takes responsibility? Birmingham’s ERP extraordinary meeting | Computer Weekly
Summary
Earlier this month, councillors had an opportunity to discuss the past and current issues faced by Birmingham City Council in its implementation of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system from Oracle. Councillor Albert Bore noted that the council previously ran a 10-year joint venture with Capita to run an SAP ERP system. “I put it in because I thought [they could] read these great ERP disasters – and these were big companies, run by experienced senior people, who had gone so badly wrong.” As well as failings of senior management, some councillors raised concerns that the external professionals paid to audit the council should have put more emphasis on the risks being carried by the council due to its ERP implementation. September 2023’s external auditor’s report prepared by Grant Thornton lists a statutory recommendation that the council should set a target date for the completion of the “safe and compliant” phase of the Oracle implementation. Previously, Grant Thornton auditor Stocks discussed the workaround the council had put in place with its existing bank reconciliation system (BRS).