By james art 
Grant Thornton has issued a forensic report on 66 pages linked to the unsuccessful execution of Oracle Fusion Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) at the Birmingham City Council, which left it without a functioning funding system by at least 2026.
When the Board of Directors of the Council of the Council made the decision to go out live in April 2022, it is said that the Grant Thornton auditors, “The level of risk inherent in Oracle’s decision was not properly understood. This has led to the implementation failed with significant costs of the Council, contributing to the breakdown of financial control so that it is unable to adequately control its finances in 2022/23, 2023/24 and 2024/25.
“The management and management of the program for the Oracle program had basic weaknesses that have never been effectively removed and have been further exposed by high staff in both senior and operating roles,” they said.
The Birmingham City Council implemented the SAP ERP system, ECC6, in 1999 for the purposes of finance, orders, HR and salaries. Over the years, he has been personalized to respond to the organization’s business processes. In 2006, Capital was committed to providing council services, including hosting at the SAP instance.
And then came the SAP ERP system based on its messages, a high-speed memory database, HANA, S/4 HANA, in 2015 SAP also announced the end of support for the older ERP by 2025, more late expanded to 2027
Like many other SAP customers, Birmingham had a choice to make. He decided to move to a cloudy -based Oracle Fusion, following Socitm Condentsory tips, and announced his decision in July 2019.
He also announced contracts for the InSight UK LTD program support, in partnership with Evosys for System Integration; Socitm Advisory, for managing programs and changes; and output for data migration services.
AMEO PROFESSIONAL SERVICS has been appointed to provide the management and assurance of the January 2021 Council Program. The effectiveness of AMEO and other suppliers is the subject of another report ordered by the Council, says Grant Thornton. His findings are legal privileged, according to the auditor, and they are not included in the report on February 11, 2025.
As reported earlier in Computer Weekly, the case of the financial business for the upgrade showed that the SAP system managed by Capita costs £ 5.1 million a year. In the nine years, between 2022/2023 and 2031/2032, this will amount to £ 46 million. During the same period, the Oracle system aimed to save £ 563,000 in 2022/23 and £ 788K in 2023/2024, with savings accumulating in nine years to £ 10.9 million.
In August 2019, the Council ended its contract with the capital, and most of the IT services were transferred to an internal team, including 300 Capita employees, for the most part, not Oracle specialists. According to the report, the construction of Oracle’s internal ability proved to be “very challenging”.
As reported earlier in Computer Weekly, after the 2022 leaves, the Oracle system requires manual elimination to eliminate accounting problems. The Council’s financial statements for 2024 showed a budget of 5.3 million British pounds for continuous support and manual intervention in the Oracle system.
The authors of the report note that the failure of the implementation of Oracle Fusion is “a factor in contributing to the financial situation of the Council, not a major factor.”
He also notes that the implementation program fails to adhere to its design principles in order to accept the functionality of Oracle-Standard, instead to choose to adapt it in order to be aligned with the existing processes of the Council.
Changing Business Culture ignores
Grant Thornton also found that the Council did not focus enough on changing the business and culture required to prepare the Oracle System organization. The end users were “unprepared and unfounded to using the system,” he said.
He also notes that “Council culture seems to be one where either bad news has not been welcome, or employees feel uncomfortable to report bad news. We have announced early on the high level of turnover of senior officials in the Council. If the Council is to succeed with other major projects, including the current ERP project, and avoid such problems with the unsuccessful ERP implementation, then you will need to carefully consider how it can change its culture to openness, mutual support and transparency. “
Amid the impact of the unsuccessful performance of Oracle, the auditors note their overall costs, plus the investment needed to fix it will be at least $ 90 million above its original budget. It is not expected to rethink the system to end by 2026.
The Council will hold a meeting on March 11, 2025 to examine Grant Thornton’s report, who draws lessons from the application of Botched. They include “training points” in terms of management and supervision, program management, design design, business and culture changes.