NSW Family and Community Services prepares for single SAP

The NSW Department of Family and Community Services (FaCS) will consolidate three SAP instances down to one by the middle of next year.

All three SAP instances are managed and provided by shared services agency Businesslink for FaCS constituent agencies, which include Housing NSW, Community Services, and Ageing, Disability and Home Care.

Consolidating to a single ERP system is expected to enable FaCS to take a single view of finance, purchasing and human resources functions.

It is also anticipated to streamline delivery of shared services from BusinessLink to FaCS agencies, and reduce the costs associated with providing those shared services.

"For historical reasons, Housing NSW and Businesslink are on separate instances, and Community Services and Ageing, Disability and Home Care share an instance but as separate clients," a Businesslink spokesman told iTnews.

"Consolidation of SAP instances is in line with the whole-of government Corporate Shared Services improvements initiated by the former Government in 2010 to deliver cost savings.

"Businesslink expects that the three existing SAP systems will be consolidated into a single SAP ERP system by mid 2013."

A tender process is underway to select an IT service provider to manage the consolidation work.

The majority of data held in the existing SAP instances is expected to be archived rather than migrated to the consolidated instance, "allowing for a clean break to start afresh", according to the spokesman.

The consolidated instance is also expected to run enhancement pack four of SAP's ECC6.

"There are currently no plans to upgrade to Enhancement Pack 5, although this will be reviewed," the spokesman said.

"[We] continue to look for ways to improve its systems and services in line with whole-of-government process standards and to reduce the time front line service staff spend completing administrative activities."