Tuesday 6th October, 2015

Arun District Council has created a pioneering new framework to allow 28 authorities to purchase financial management software by Advanced Business Solutions (Advanced). The software will go-live in April 2016.

Under the terms of the four-year agreement, 28 district and borough councils situated in East and West Sussex and Surrey may also use the framework to purchase e5 and associated maintenance up to £1.7 million. Councils can negotiate directly with Advanced and specify their finance system solution requirements, without needing to go through a lengthy tendering and evaluation process to determine the most suitable supplier.

Paul Symes, Programme Manager at Arun District Council comments, "We wanted to create a unique framework to reflect our ethos of working better together with neighbouring authorities and increase collaboration. As there are only seven councils located within West Sussex, we wanted to extend our invitation to other authorities in nearby regions to use the framework to drive economies of scale."

Arun sought a robust, fully supported and integrated solution to improve the quality of and access to financial information for council members, senior officers and budget managers. The organisation also required more streamlined reporting functionality with less duplication of effort by eliminating its reliance on third party systems and interfaces.