Business Challenge
Cardiff council embarked on a major review with an objective of being "a high-performing provider of value-for-money services for its citizens and customers by transforming ways of working to make better use of skills, knowledge and assets".
The council identified various initiatives as part of this transformational journey to overcome the diverse challenges it faced. Until the implementation of the project, the council had limited visibility of its organisational structure. The HR and Payroll department was reviewing staffing levels in particular, as at that time, it had no employee self service (ESS) and manager self service (MSS) capabilities, and used nonstandard processes.
The department operated in a transactional way with a limited ability to view and monitor compliance. The knowledge management system did not use enterprise wide policies and procedures. Multiple forms and processes were used, causing confusion among end users – for example, 88 payroll forms were used for 11 processes. The cost of full-time equivalent was approximately £3.6 million a year. Multiple systems were used for the same function existing in silos – 11 document management systems and 13 case management systems were used along with paperbased processes, for instance.
TCS' Solution
Cardiff council was aware of the need for public sector organisations to leverage technology to adapt to the changing world and deal with the ongoing reduction in public services funding. TCS aimed to support Cardiff while it upgraded its technology services and collaborate with the IT department to rationalise and integrate its back-office IT systems.
TCS was selected to solve various challenges facing the Council in this area and to help it achieve its objective. The aim of the HR and payroll initiative was to create a single service to centrally manage the HR, training and payroll operations. The TCS experts reviewed multiple options for the solution, while recognising the need for protecting the investment the Council had already made in SAP for HR and payroll.
TCS' framework oriented architecture model, that customised and extended existing commercial off-the-shelf products, was chosen to build an appropriate solution. The team proposed an integrated solution with DigiGOV – an IT enabler framework, and SAP implementation. The core SAP HR data management and payroll modules were retained, while enhanced functionality was provided using the flexible and scalable DigiGOV framework. TCS implemented DigiGOV based on its rapid transformation methodology which proved particularly effective in the Single Status project. Integrating technology and people with process change plans, the team implemented HR internal shared services and single status for the council.
Some key features of the solution are:
Results
TCS produced an inventory and evaluated the existing IT landscape on cost, contracts, technology, purpose, life and scalability. It worked in partnership at defining the Strategic Roadmap and Enterprise Architecture with the existing and new systems, providing a structured approach to technology implementation across the council. TCS' solution delivered savings of around £900,000 per annum, along with the following significant benefits:
• Potential for economies of scale and higher level of efficiency through simplification and standardisation
• More reliable, richer and consistent management information enabling efficiency and cost savings
• Potential for quantifiable improvements to customer service and customer satisfaction
• Potential for greater staff satisfaction demonstrated by a shift towards more value-added activities
• Flexibility of workforce to meet peaks and troughs in workload
• Professional shared services capability that the council can take to market to generate new revenue and meet Welsh Government mandates
• Scalability and flexibility of service to meet new challenges as the council transforms and evolves
• Technology enabled flexibility to deal with new policy changes
• Technology to support the implementation of Single Status to eliminate gender-based pay gaps and introduce an 'equality-proofed' pay model; harmonise pay and terms and conditions between former manual and non-manual workers
TCS met and exceeded the council's expectations in many areas:
• Delivery of smartphone/tablet-compatible human resources management system
• 24 X 7 access to ESS and MSS through internet
• Data cleansing and removal of anomalies in the existing legacy systems
• Rationalising processes out of the scope impacting HR and payroll functions
• Validation and generation of real-time organisation structure
• Enterprise-wide knowledge base to rationalise multiple sources of outdated information
• Design and proposal of a solution to implement Single Status in record time
This unique engagement includes an innovative methodology that allows Cardiff council to transform its IT services while retaining its in-house technology and IT team. In the future, we plan to develop new approaches and technologies to delivering public services.
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