NSW Trade to consolidate ERP in the cloud

To implement software as a service by December.

NSW Trade and Investment will consolidate enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems of nine agencies in the cloud under a high-priority project set to conclude in December.

The so-called transition and consolidation to a single ERP (TCSERP) project follows an April 2011 state government restructure that saw agencies organised into nine department clusters.

NSW Trade and Investment encompassed the former Industry and Investment NSW, Office of Water, Marine Parks, Crown Lands, Soil Conservation Service, Food Authority, Arts NSW, Destination NSW and the Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing.

Tender documents issued this week indicated that the cluster had disparate corporate systems, data and shared services arrangements, resulting in inefficiencies and operational risk.

With no single view of the business and its operations, the department had inconsistent policies, procedures and systems and could not consistently monitor and measure performance, it said.

For the TCSERP project, it sought a “true SaaS [software-as-a-service]” solution to support finance, procurement, HR and payroll functions for 7000 users.

Phase one of the project, expected to conclude in December, was expected to bring the nine NSW Trade and Investment entities onto a new hosted ERP platform.

A second phase would conclude in June 2013, bringing cultural institutions including the Sydney Opera House, Art Gallery, State Library, Australian and Powerhouse Museums onto the platform.

NSW Trade and Investment sought an “out-of-the-box solution that can be rapidly deployed and capable of supporting a set of standard processes with minimal configuration”.

Services were to be hosted, maintained and developed by the vendor in a multi-tenanted environment, and consumed under a pay-per-use model.

Client data would also be hosted by the vendor, although all transactional processing would be conducted by NSW Trade and Investment.

The department called for details of prospective service providers’ infrastructure, system performance, data warehouse and business intelligence capabilities, and disaster recovery arrangements.

It also called for providers’ plans in regards to “emerging technologies” such as mobile platforms, analytics, social media, and integration with geospatial and cloud technologies such as Google.

“The purpose of the project is to provide prerequisite minimum capability and technology platform to integrate people, processes and technology into the new whole of cluster mode of operation,” the department explained.

 The request for tender closes on 16 May.