Transforming services, unlocking value with Oracle Cloud

The Scottish Government (SG) is responsible for developing policy and the legislative agenda with Ministers. As a central element in the Scottish public sector, SG sponsors and funds many of the public bodies responsible for the delivery of services to Scotland’s population of five million.

To work effectively with numerous other public bodies, SG must run smoothly behind the scenes. That’s not always been an easy task, especially given fragmented, outdated technology.

This was the reality facing human resources (HR) and finance functions at SG. For decades, their teams had been using two separate Oracle E-Business systems for finance and purchasing and HR and payroll.  These legacy systems had not kept up with organizational growth or technology change, leaving users reliant on spreadsheets and manual workarounds to get their work done.

As Brian Reid, Director of Corporate Transformation, states, "It was a classic case of outdated technology no longer meeting the needs of the organization. Instead of being a help, our systems were hindering people from working efficiently and getting the insights they needed. They also brought a lot of operational risk. It was getting very difficult to maintain payroll, for instance, on our previous platform."

SG had an enduring aspiration to bring finance and HR onto a shared services platform to standardize processes, reduce costs, and enhance experiences for civil servants and citizens alike.  

Reid notes, “With more than 30 public bodies running on the legacy systems, it was effectively already a shared service. But the platform had never lived up to SG’s original vision of common data, streamlined processes, and shared savings. Our aspiration is to grow that shared services model and really leverage it for the benefit of public sector employees and the people of Scotland."

Within three weeks of going live, SG had its first major test of the new Oracle platform—running monthly payroll for 20,000 employees. The solution passed with flying colors, and has since helped SG to complete several months of successful monthly payroll processing.

“We’ve passed through many key milestones since go-live, avoiding all of the potential issues that we were most concerned about,” says Reid. “Getting the critical processes right – such as payroll, payments, financial reporting – was a vital first step. Oracle Cloud Applications are delivering the strong consistency, transparency, and control we were looking for.”

As anticipated from the outset, the project has not been without its challenges. Not all parts of the system and associated processes are yet optimal. Reid also points out that some stakeholders are still making the transition to new ways of working, and that the organization is experiencing the inevitable post-go-live issues common in a change of this scale and complexity. As a result, not all parts of SG yet recognize the benefits of the transformation. However, Reid is confident that the organization has the core platform and capabilities it needs to build on and optimise. The scale of the change is very large. Reid says continuous improvement, the regular upgrades, and the partnerships with Oracle and IBM will address those areas that are not yet optimal.

“The IBM team has played a crucial role in post-go-live support, giving us continuity of expertise and ongoing knowledge transfer,” says Reid. “Together, we’ve acted quickly to address post go-live issues, re-validating key design decisions in a ‘live mode’ environment and ensuring the solution and platform enable all users to get the full value of the transformation.”

While there remains much work to do, across SG, teams can already get a unified view of HR and financial data in the cloud, which is driving improved decision making.

Reid notes, “With IBM and Oracle, we have enabled the classic single version of truth. We now have the ability to run reports and analytics on one complete HR-finance dataset, as opposed to working with two separate datasets. The impact of this will be significant. People and money didn’t join up before; now they do. That’s key to allowing us to make much better-informed decisions from a management perspective.”

He continues: “Working on a common platform has brought HR and Finance colleagues closer together to understand and improve the data, manage change on the platform, and embed controls. We can already see many opportunities for further improvement, enabled via shared technology, a common dataset and a desire to make the operating model work as well as it can.”

According to Reid, “We have transparency on financial data in Oracle at a greater level than we ever had on the old system. Finance professionals can drill down on the general ledger and the chart of accounts to see every invoice and every line of item of expenditure. Of course, it takes time to learn these new tools and build broad familiarity, but there are already signs that that data quality and transparency will provide much faster and clearer insight into how money is being spent.”

Likewise, adopting industry-standard solutions and following best-practice approaches for process design is starting to bring greater rigor to operations, reducing cost and presenting options for departmental and organizational growth.

“The controls embedded in the system are working well, and the organization can immediately enjoy the benefits of that,” confirms Reid. “That’s a big potential positive from an audit perspective. It also supports greater due diligence around day-to-day financial management. We know that people are following consistent processes, rather than doing things their own way.”

With modern cloud applications and standardized processes in place, SG is on the path to realizing its ambition for effective shared services. The organization is now working with IBM on a series of discovery sessions with other agencies, aiming to bring more of Scotland’s public bodies onto the same shared services platform.

Reid comments: “Every one of those public bodies has to manage payroll, HR records, finance, and reporting accounts. The option to work with us and join a shared platform is now available, which means that individual public bodies can avoid internalizing the whole problem, and all of the costs. The opportunity to deduplicate, and work together to build and mature technology services at scale, is now real. If those entities were to onboard onto our shared platform, they would get the benefits of accelerated change and lower run costs. That’s our ultimate goal.”

In the background, SG has continued to work with IBM on refining the new systems and working practices. Reid concludes: “Issues are inevitable in a major project like this. What’s key is how you work through those issues, remain calm, and maintain a strong team ethos. It’s crucial to have a partner that stays the course, works in harmony with your internal teams for collective benefit, and recognizes when you need guidance to make the right decisions. I think IBM has been that partner and we’re happy to have them on our side as we continue our journey.”

The Scottish Government (SG) is responsible for developing policy and the legislative agenda with Ministers. As a central element in the Scottish public sector, SG sponsors and funds many of the public bodies responsible for the delivery of services to Scotland’s population of five million.