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Tauranga-based Western Bay of Plenty District Council is preparing to seek a supplier to implement multiple modules of a cloud-based enterprise resource planning system.
The new software would support the organisation to be “future ready”, a pre-tender notice filed on Friday said.
“The new ERP is to enable the design of more customer-centric services, better integrating the services of suppliers and partners, being able to plan and track achievement of broader outcomes including community well-being measures and deliver significant process efficiencies,” it said
The council said it was seeking to partner with a supplier with extensive experience with the proposed solution in the New Zealand local government sector and proven capability and capacity.
“A supplier who identifies with our values is important to us,” the notice said.
In September, the council’s audit, risk and finance committee heard staff were defining requirements to be used in the procurement of a system to replace the council’s current ERP software, which it had earlier described as at “end of life”.
“Staff have had to understand how current systems fitted together and what was needed moving forward,” the committee was told.
The council’s chief information officer was also collaborating with other councils looking to change their ERP systems and had partnered with these to use their background work, procurement policies and learn from their ERP implementations.
The procurement follows receipt of an ERP feasibility and readiness report prepared by Christchurch-based consultancy Effectus which provides independent IT governance to “de-risk” core system upgrades or replacement projects.
An earlier 2020 report from consultancy Maven said the council’s existing system, Ozone, was at the end of its supported life and the council was considering piloting vendor Datacom’s replacement system, Datascape, for customer relationship management.
“This will enable Council to assess the systems’ overall suitability as the future ERP, while also researching other replacement options,” the report said.
Replacing Ozone provided an opportunity to build a platform to deliver more customer-centric and better integrated services, process efficiencies and to track the achievement of broader outcomes including community wellbeing measures, Maven reported.
Datacom booked a $23 million impairment to its local government business in the year to 31 March 2023.
Peter Nelson, managing director SaaS products at Datacom, told Reseller News earlier this year it was a one-off accounting adjustment based on a conservative point in time valuation.
“I’m pleased to confirm that Datascape is performing well across all key performance indicators, with revenue increasing by 70 per cent in 2024 and a healthy customer pipeline,” he said in August.
New HR software from Workday also appears to be on the council’s upgrade agenda.