Getting all the various stakeholders to agree to the new Shared Services Strategy for Government was a challenge. Logically, it made sense: having five shared systems should cost less than hundreds of stand-alone systems. But not everyone was convinced.
Some stakeholders were concerned about their roles: the people who currently managed each organisation’s systems may not be required in the future. Functional roles too could change, with HR and Finance roles in particular. The Strategy didn’t propose the consolidation of HR and Finance functions, but having a single shared system would make it much easier in the future. Having separate systems would remove this risk.
Partners in the private sector were also concerned: there would be fewer systems to sell to government. Once the five clusters had completed their procurement, the volume of new ERP sales to central government would be considerably reduced. This would impact both the technology vendors and the implementation partners.
The biggest objection was that it would be difficult to configure the system to meet the different needs of multiple organisations. This was raised by most stakeholders. It was based on the assumption that different government departments had different HR and Finance needs.
Each Government Department and Arms Length Body (ALB) was established to deliver a unique service for the citizens of the UK. HMRC collects taxes, DWP manage the benefits system, FCDO runs embassies across the world, MOD keeps the country safe, while the Passport Office, DVLA, HM Prison Service, and other ALBs all do things no-one else can do.
However, the way staff salaries are paid, how suppliers get paid, and how expenses are processed, etc. don’t need to be different.
A programme, led by the Government Finance Function in HM Treasury, called the Functional Convergence Programme, sought to define standard processes and standard data definitions for the whole of central government. These were launched in the summer of 2024 as the NOVA process and data standards.
The NOVA standards significantly reduced the strength of the argument that a shared system would need to be support different configurations for each organisations. There would obviously need to be some differences, for each organisational structure for example, but the majority could be standardised.
This wasn’t a quick change: it took months of discussions with technology vendors and implementation partners. It took years for the Functional Convergence Programme to complete their work. But this addressed the primary objection of organisations using a shared ERP platform.
If this hadn’t been done the outcome could have been the same as the previous attempt to implement shared services in government: the system known as SOP, or Standard Operating Platform. In 2012 departments were “encouraged” to join a shared ERP platform. There was significant resistance. Some refused, and others only joined with the promise that they could configure it to meet their own needs. The system become more and more customised as each department introduced their own localisations. Upgrading it became increasingly difficult and even analysing the impact of a change request became increasingly expensive.
SOP wasn’t a failure, far from it. It saved the UK government millions of pounds over it’s life, but some of the compromises made at the start to encourage organisations to join meant that it wasn’t able to reach its full potential.
Spending the time and effort to do it right this time round will help ensure that the new shared systems are built on firmer foundations.
ERP Success 