London boroughs seek integrator to support Oracle ERP software-sharing project

Four London boroughs are looking for a systems integrator to support their plan to share a single instance of Oracle's latest ERP software.

The contract, which will be worth up to £88.5m over four years, includes the London boroughs of Barking and Dagenham, Brent, Lambeth and Lewisham, which are existing Oracle users. It is hoped other councils - including Croydon and Havering - will join the shared services deal at a later date.

A tender put out by the councils says: "The main purpose of this procurement is to contract a supplier of ICT systems integration services to support the transition to a combined single instance of Oracle E-Business 12 in response to the planned end date of software vendor support for the Oracle R11 of November 2013."

The councils want the system to be hosted and require additional functionality as well as Oracle E-Business Suite support & maintenance.

The discussions have been held London-wide as part of Programme Athena, which wants to "lay the foundations to create a single ICT platform for London public sector organisations to gain the opportunity and ability to deliver significant efficiencies and service improvements for ICT enabled support service functions such as Finance and HR."