Hampshire County Council s1

Hampshire County Council

PSchools Forum Item 10

16 December 2013

Integrated Business Centre (IBC)

Report of the Director of Corporate Resources- Corporate Services

Contact: Andrew Minall, 01962 846287, [email protected]

1 Summary

1.1 This paper sets out in more detail the Integrated Business Centre development and the planned changes to SAP.

1.2 It also highlights the impacts to schools and the planned rollout, communication and engagement recognising that the project is fast evolving and subject to change.

2 Background

1.3 Schools Forum received a briefing by the Director of Corporate Resources at its meeting on 23 May 2012 which outlined the transformation programme for corporate services.

1.4 As part of a review of corporate services within the Council a new, integrated and efficient function is being developed to deliver transactional processes and operational support for the County Council and its partners. This function, currently referred to as the Integrated Business Centre (IBC) will operate in the following areas:

3 Finance 4 HR 5 Procurement 1.5 As part of this development, this will mean a significant upgrade in SAP. SAP was implemented into schools early 2004 and apart from minor revisions, has remained fundamentally unchanged. The platform is now outdated and becoming difficult to support and contain costs. The interface is also very outdated and not user friendly, processes inefficient and exposes users to compliance risk and entry errors.

1.6 This upgrade should provide a range of benefits to school users including: 6 Improved user interface. 7 Processes based on current best practice. 8 Reduced risk of compliance issues and errors through increased automation / data validation. 1.7 The impact of these changes will include:

9 Change to look and feel. 10 Some changes to processes / terminology. 11 Improved "user experience". 12 Centralisation of some teams therefore some name / contact changes for queries. 1.8 While there will inevitably be changes to processes through this upgrade to SAP, the key outcomes schools require can still be achieved, for example:

13 Ability to access your school’s information. 14 Schools will still be able to decide on preferred suppliers. 15 Ability to manage and control your budget and spend. 16 Able to report effectively to governors. 1.9 After considerable development work over the summer, we are now in a position to start engaging with school representatives.

17 Timescales

1.10 The design of the IBC began in July 2012 and was completed in March 2013, informed by a series of workshops involving staff across all three organisations. This included working with representatives from schools, to ensure their needs are met. 1.11 The project has now moved into a significant phase of ‘building and testing’ the designs, which will conclude with a phased implementation of the IBC during 2014. The planned ‘go live’ dates for the IBC are: 18 Council departments – 31 March 2014 19 Schools – 30 June 2014 20 Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service – August 2014 21 Hampshire Constabulary – November 2014 1.12 Individual work programmes are developed for each organisation, which are specific to them and their timescales for implementation.

22 Schools engagement plan

22.1 Engagement with all schools to date has been through established communication channels such including scheduled meetings, newsletters and schools.

- 2 - 22.2 A Schools IBC user group has been formed from volunteer school representatives consisting of business management, administrative and finance staff. The group provides a good cross section of representatives across phases and areas.

22.3 The groups terms of reference include:

23 Important role in capturing and representing school views / needs with feedback into project 24 Building an understanding of need and implications for change 25 Encourage awareness in the schools community 26 Sounding board with first sight of information 27 Recognition that system is changing / developing

27.1 Future updates will be provided regularly to ensure plans and impact are shared with schools with engagement and appropriate support for the changes increasing towards go-live or if there are any areas of the programme that may impact early.

27.2 The representative group will be consulted and the schools change lead will ensure that information is provided and communicated effectively to maximise awareness within schools.

28 Accessing the IBC

The Online Portal

28.1 Staff will be able to access IBC services through a new easy-to-use online Portal, which will be accessible through Hantsnet. Staff will use the online Portal to carry out HR, Purchasing and Financial transactions, including requesting leave, claiming travel expenses, purchasing goods and services and raising purchase orders.

28.2 Once the IBC 'goes live', it is likely that only staff working within the IBC will have access to the full SAP system. All other staff will use the new online Portal for HR, Purchasing and Financial transactions.

28.3 The online Portal is being designed to enable staff to 'self-serve' easily online, similar to the way that many people carry out day to day activities online, including banking and shopping. It is envisaged that minimum training will be required due to the simplicity of the online Portal.

28.4 Illustrative screen shots of some of the portal screens are provided in appendix 1. These are subject to change but do provide a good representation of the approach being adopted.

Employee Self-Service (ESS) Lite

28.5 ESS Lite will be available to all staff for easy access to the most commonly used transactions

- 3 - 29 Request leave 30 Claim travel and expenses 31 Change personal information (e.g. address, bank details) 32 View payslips 33 Notify absence 34 Notify return to work 35 Submit timesheets 36 Submit general queries

36.1 It is expected that the number of functions available through ESS Lite will grow over time.

36.1 The self service approach is becoming the most common approach used in organisations and can provide many benefits for both the employer and the employee. However, it is recognised that this presents a significant change.

36.2 Initial feedback from school representatives suggests that whilst many features would be welcome, there could be some challenges in implementing this approach within schools. This facility is therefore, being offered as optional to schools.

36.3 Further views on this approach and a small number of schools willing to pilot the approach would be welcome.

The e-store

36.4 SRM is the electronic catalogue for Hampshire County Council and is a module of the SAP system which lists all stock items and contracted goods and services. As part of the IBC project, SRM will be upgraded and the 'front-end' of the new version will be known as the 'e-store'. The e-store will provide staff with a better experience when buying goods and services and staff will access it through the online Portal.

Getting help - the Customer Interaction Centre

36.5 The new model is designed to encourage self-service and this will be backed up by clear guidance and information. However, there will be occasions when staff require additional help or expert advice. A new Customer Interaction Centre will be set-up, based within Hantsdirect, to provide additional support when needed. Agents in the Centre will either provide the information and advice required or refer more complex queries to a member of the IBC or Finance/HR operational team. Staff will no longer have named contacts, however, case numbers will be assigned for case work (for example, employee relations) so that calls can be routed as appropriate.

37 Procurement

- 4 - 37.1 Included within the project is the development of solutions to substantially reduce the handling of paper invoices from suppliers. Three approaches are being adopted to reflect the volume of transactions received:

38 Electronic Data Interface (EDI) will enable electronic receipt of invoices directly into SAP 39 Vendor Invoice Management (VIM) will support the scanning and recognition of paper invoices and credit notes received into the Correspondence hub 40 Low volume, low value transactions which will be unchanged at this stage

41 Vendor Invoice Management

41.1 The VIM solution will automate elements of the procurement process however this requires greater compliance with correct procurement processes. This will mean that a purchase order will need to be raised in advance of engaging with a supplier and a goods receipt will need to be completed.

41.2 This will allow physical invoices to be received centrally through a correspondence hub, scanned and an automated invoice recognition process which will initiate payment providing a successful match is made within SAP (matching invoices to POs and goods receipts).

41.3 Where a successful match is made, it will still be possible to run an SAP transaction to confirm that the transaction with the supplier is complete.

41.4 If a successful match is not made, then an exception process will ensure that this is referred back to the school e.g. where a price or quantity does not match. This will include sufficient information including an electronic copy of the invoice to allow for corrective action to be taken.

41.5 The change should save processing time, reduce errors and will improve the governance and control framework through ensuring greater compliance. Greater compliance will mean, however, that an exception process will need to be in place in case of emergency and will limit the ability of some staff who may seek to make an ad hoc purchase without following the correct system and authorisation process.

41.6 The VIM solution will be rolled out incrementally with suppliers transferring in waves. After each wave, a testing and evaluation process will be undertaken prior to the next tranche of suppliers transferring.

41.7 It is planned that the initial tranche of 16 suppliers will transfer in December with a steady increase over the next few months. The initial 16 suppliers have been specifically selected to minimise impact on schools. Therefore, it is unlikely that schools will need to procure from a VIM supplier until mid January 2014 at the earliest.

- 5 - 41.8 As this will have an impact on schools, initial communications have been sent to ensure all school users are aware of the change and can operate with the change to process for some suppliers with further communication and guidance issued during roll out.

Correspondence Hub

41.9 A Correspondence Hub will also be set up to deal with scanned copies of invoices. All invoices will be sent to the Hub to be scanned and electronically matched to purchase orders. This will require the use of standard information from suppliers including the purchase order number.

41.10 The customer access model for the IBC and Finance/HR operations is illustrated in the following diagram.

42 Recommendations

42.1 It is recommended that the Schools Forum note the progress made and support the approach to engagement outlined in section 4.

42.2 It is recommended that the Schools Forum agrees an approach to obtaining volunteers for using the new ESS system.

- 6 - The IBC home page Appendix 1 Employee

- 8 - Schools

Enter Amend Manage Acting Starter Employee Leavers Up Records Form

Teachers Manage Data Entry Reports Pay Positions SWF Census