Research among 240 European local authorities, including cities, towns and boroughs, carried out by UNIT4, the provider of enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, shows that the majority of municipalities are unable to make system changes independently. Only 9% say they are able to make required changes independent of external advisors and consultants.
UNIT4 interviewed 240 IT and/or Finance Directors in the Netherlands, UK, Belgium, Norway and Sweden about their back-office systems. The findings revealed that more than 50% of municipalities have at least five different systems from different suppliers to manage their back-office operations. This varies from systems for document management (84% of respondents had one of these), HR systems (72%), payroll (70%) and procurement systems (23%) and planning systems (26%), among others.
Survey respondents indicated that their systems need adapting and changing regularly in response to external factors. 60% of the municipalities questioned, indicated they needed to make changes in response to changing legislation and regulations. 37% said the changes were needed due to procedural changes.
A minority (9%) of respondents said they are able to make required changes to their systems without assistance from external consultants. However, 57% believed it is important or very important to be able to make changes autonomously; 64% mentioned complexity of the systems as a major obstacle to change, followed by cost (56% of respondents) and fear of disruption (43%).
“Local governments are the closest to people and the most highly visible government organisations,” says Thom Rubel, Vice President of Research at IDC Government Insights. “The diversity of services and departments is unmatched in nearly any industry. Therefore local governments need post implementation agility more than any other level of government. Yet they are often the least able to effectively realign IT systems to support it.”
“Local government is heavily impacted by constant change whether that’s change to government legislation, organisational restructuring or procedural change,” said Ton Dobbe, Vice President Product Management at UNIT4. “Without systems that can be changed easily to reflect these pressures, municipalities are suffering from inefficiencies and a negative impact on finances resulting in budget overruns; this on top of the huge fees they are paying to external IT consultants. Reality tells us that the longer it takes to make a financial software change – the greater the disruptive impact to the organisation.”
UNIT4 by contrast says that its customers see 50% time savings for ERP system changes versus competitive systems. Citing the results of two surveys that UNIT4 conducted over 12 months via outside research companies, UNIT 4 says that changes to Agresso Business World take half (or less) of the time required by other ERP system users. Companies reported that they required more than twice as much help from IT professionals to make changes to their ERP systems; specifically, 47% of the respondents required IT professionals to take the leadership role for changes after the system was deployed, versus just 20% with Agresso Business World.
“This agility combined with the cost savings our local government customers report gives them significant advantage and ensures they deliver a better service,” added Ton Dobbe.
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