London Borough of Barnet Transforming local services through SAP Upgrade CASE STUDY arnet is one of the largest Boroughs, situated LOCAL GOVERNMENT to the North West of the City, bordering B . Barnet’s SAP footprint consisted of R3 v4.7 running a wide range of modules including: HR and Payroll for 8,000 employees, FI-CO, SD, MM, PS, PM, “The project took six Adobe Forms, Business Warehouse (BW), Supplier months and was seen as a Relationship Management (SRM) and various non-SAP great success by the interfaces supporting in excess of 1,000 core users. First business and senior Line support was delivered by the Council themselves with management within the Second and Third Line support run by CGI under a Managed Authority. My experience of Services contract. All hardware (in excess of 30 servers) working with CGI on this were hosted by CGI from their data centres in Bridgend, upgrade project was that South Wales. they did a lot of the preparation and planning CGI helps in modernising Barnet Council and making it a businesslike borough that manages its resources efficiently and effectively enabling it to work, making my job a lot provide excellent services to local people. easier.” Andrew Gee, Barnet Process & THE CHALLENGE Solutions Manager, London Barnet approached CGI and invited them to submit a proposal to upgrade Borough of Barnet the R3 SAP landscape from v4.7 to ECC6 so they could gain the benefits of

SAP’s latest software (e.g. Service Orientated Architecture, Enterprise Maintenance, Enhancement Packs, and the use of MSS/ESS functionality which would then lead to the implementation of portals and Customer Relationship Management (CRM)). The scope of the upgrade proposal covered a hardware refresh (to leverage enhanced 64bit architecture) a technical ‘as is’ upgrade of R3 v4.7 to ECC6, and an upgrade of Solution Manager from v3.1 to v4.0.

THE UPGRADE CGI were responsible for undertaking and delivering the hardware refresh and technical Upgrade. It was clear from the outset that this could only be done in partnership with the customer. Therefore, strong project management and clear lines of communication were essential for this to be a successful project. CGI worked hard to minimise the business impact for the customer by scheduling downtime around key processes (e.g. Payroll) through carefully planning including hour-by-hour (for cutover weekend), co- ordination, and use of a downtime-minimised upgrade strategy.

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Following the upgrade CGI undertook the reengineering of bespoke processes and unit testing and Barnet were responsible for the majority of the integration testing work to ensure all business processes and technical functionality still worked as it had previously. Testing was a key activity for building confidence in the upgraded system and managing risk and it was imperative that adequate resources were deployed from both sides and that they were fully committed. A payroll simulation was run to ensure that this key process was correct following the upgrade along with a multitude of other HR, financial and procurement activities.

THE OUTCOME The upgrade was delivered to budget and mutually agreed deadlines enabling Barnet to take the next step towards realising their MSS/ESS vision and continue their strategy for delivering improved business processes.

“The project referenced in this case study was delivered by Logica, which CGI acquired in August 2012”

For more information, please contact us at: T: +44 (0) 845 070 7765 E: [email protected] www.cgi-group.co.uk/localgovernment

About CGI With over 68,000 professionals in 40 countries, CGI fosters local accountability for client success while bringing global delivery capabilities to clients’ front doors. Founded in 1976, CGI applies a disciplined delivery approach that has achieved an industry-leading track record of on-time, on-budget projects. Our high-quality business consulting, systems integration and outsourcing services help clients leverage current investments while adopting new technology and business strategies that achieve top and bottom line results. As a demonstration of our commitment, our average client satisfaction score for the past 10 years has measured consistently higher than 9 out of 10. cgi-group.co.uk Code 0020 0613 © 2013 CGI GROUP INC.