Thursday 23rd April, 2015

Havering Council and Newham Council have launched a pilot project to share the same budgeting and forecasting solution by Advanced Business Solutions (Advanced).

The councils have joined together under a Joint Committee arrangement to form oneSource, which delivers back office services. This is set to achieve more than £10m in potential annual savings over the next three to five years.

The budgeting and forecasting pilot follows Havering’s successful use of Collaborative Planning, implemented in 2011. The system has helped to eliminate the use of multiple Excel spreadsheets and enabled authorised users to accurately monitor the authority’s capital and revenue budgets.

As part of the oneSource partnership, sharing Collaborative Planning will further extend the councils’ shared services initiative as an integral part of an ongoing cost and efficiency drive.

Both councils also are part of the One Oracle Project, which involves seven local authorities in London using Oracle’s ERP software, joining together to share an IT platform. In August 2014 Havering went live on the project, and Newham Council is due to go live in 2015.

Owen Sparks, Operations Manager for Havering Council with responsibility for business partnering at Newham, said: "Collaborative Planning provides us with an easy way to manage our budgets online in a single place. The flexibility and effectiveness of the system gave us the confidence to recommend and roll-out the solution to Newham."

"As both councils share services it is important that our systems and processes are aligned to enable us to work together as smoothly as possible. System intuitiveness and ease of use are also essential to enable our budget holders to fully engage with the financial management process. The use of the system has led to improved budget holder responsibility and ownership."