UK West Midlands town finds five-year HR system deal is only offer on the table in pandemic-stricken procurement
- Reference: 1605525905
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/11/16/uk_west_midlands_town_finds/
- Source link:
The Register 's attention was brought to an anomalous piece of procurement justification published earlier this month in connection with Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council's HR system.
[1]
Aerial view of the Waterfront area in Dudley, West Midlands, UK
Back in 2017, the council went live with iTrent, from MidlandHR. This year, it was set to make some decisions as the contract came to an end.
What did it do? It rehired Midland without outside competition, signing a £1.05m contract, seeming in none-too-favourable circumstances.
The procurement notice – [2]out on 2 November – said that the decision to award the contract to MidlandHR was taken on technical grounds, as it had opted to stick with the software and no one else could support it.
But the pandemic seems to have put the council in something of a tight spot, where even an "emergency process" failed to produce the desired result.
"Due to the re-prioritisation of Council resources to manage the Covid-19 pandemic officers were unable to address the immediate replacement of the contract, even following the emergency process, and as such a full procurement process could not be complied with. Despite negotiations with MidlandHR, the only contract term available to the Council is for another 5 years," [3]the notice said .
A spokeswoman for the council said it was considering extending the contract even before the onslaught of COVID-19 and the ensuing lockdowns which disrupted the entire UK economy.
"A number of options were considered by both the contractor and the council," the spokeswoman said.
But "ultimately a five-year term was, considering all matters, felt to be the best course of action," she continued, ignoring the fact that the tender document says it was the only course of action available.
So five years it is then, whether the council likes it or not, a seeming indication of its lack of leverage with the supplier.
It is not even as if the implementation went according to plan. For a start, the system went live in April 2017 even though it "was not finally signed off until July," according to [4]a council meeting document .
The September 2018 council gathering heard that "problems around Payroll and Pensions were highlighted and immediate actions were put in place to address the issues because of the significant risk to the authority." Such was the severity that the issue required an "improvement plan that ran alongside the restructuring to address the pressing issues" as well as "changes to the leadership of the service."
By complete coincidence, Dudley Metropolitan Borough council found itself having to terminate the contract with its parallel but unrelated Microsoft Dynamics implementation because "it had become apparent that the third party supplier was not working within the best interest of the authority."
While a £1m IT contract may be chickenfeed to the big vendors, Dudley council is responsible for social care and education during a pandemic in an area [5]where half of the children grow up in poverty . It might have welcomed a bit more negotiating room with a vital IT supplier. ®
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[1] https://regmedia.co.uk/2020/11/12/shutterstock_dudley.jpg
[2] https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:533969-2020:TEXT:EN:HTML&src=0
[3] https://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:533969-2020:TEXT:EN:HTML&src=0
[4] http://cmis.dudley.gov.uk/CMIS5/Document.ashx?czJKcaeAi5tUFL1DTL2UE4zNRBcoShgo=mWDX6dAmCcXaowTjQyhh%2BLaoT0UP2HI7mxTC%2Bj5C1YaKTg%2Fpb2ZB3g%3D%3D&rUzwRPf%2BZ3zd4E7Ikn8Lyw%3D%3D=pwRE6AGJFLDNlh225F5QMaQWCtPHwdhUfCZ%2FLUQzgA2uL5jNRG4jdQ%3D%3D&mCTIbCubSFfXsDGW9IXnlg%3D%3D=hFflUdN3100%3D&kCx1AnS9%2FpWZQ40DXFvdEw%3D%3D=hFflUdN3100%3D&uJovDxwdjMPoYv%2BAJvYtyA%3D%3D=ctNJFf55vVA%3D&FgPlIEJYlotS%2BYGoBi5olA%3D%3D=NHdURQburHA%3D&d9Qjj0ag1Pd993jsyOJqFvmyB7X0CSQK=ctNJFf55vVA%3D&WGewmoAfeNR9xqBux0r1Q8Za60lavYmz=ctNJFf55vVA%3D&WGewmoAfeNQ16B2MHuCpMRKZMwaG1PaO=ctNJFf55vVA%3D
[5] https://www.dudleynews.co.uk/news/17657185.half-dudley-children-growing-poverty-shock-figures-show/
[6] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Bureaucracy
Councils rarely understand the commercial world, and the few employees who do, are not in positions that participate in the "negotiations"... instead, they rely upon bureaucracy to get things done - Which is the exact weakness a commercial supplier will "exploit".
It would be a changed world if these morons were held to the same standards as commercial entities, and legally accountable for the taxpayer's money they waste..
this is what happens when you decide you can't manage your organisation.
Not really the council's fault
Councils aren't held to the same rules as private undustry, they're much much worse and make it very hard to get good value.
You can't go out and just find someone offering a system at a good price. Often there are only 1 or two suppliers in the market even if there are more you have to put the project out to public tender.
you can only consider those who come into the public tendering process. If a company with a good product, missed the tender and misses the deadline you can't bring them back without restarting the process, which may be challeneged by the other tenderers.
during the tender the vendors will often lie and misrepresent themselves, especially if there is little competition.
You cannot haggle or negotiate prices down.
Any deviation from the process may result in a legal challenge from any of the tenderers.
In the end you often end up with hundreds of man-hours spent to get an overpriced half working product from a complete shit of a supplier. But the process is so onerous that it's often better than doing it all again.
Re: Not really the council's fault
Not true.
This smacks of procurement incompetency.
You will find (and should only select) solutions where there is a reasonable field of competition. This starts well before a tender is issued, speaking to a variety of prospective providers about their solutions, speak to peers in other public sector about their solutions, finding out about the good, the bad and the ugly. Seek references from the supplier, but also do your own homework.
Then you let all the prospective providers know you will be coming out to tender. Give them plenty of time, give them an indication of scope - even get suppliers' feedback, keeping an open mind (you never know...).
Don't issue a tender until you know that at least 5 organisations plan to respond. You may well get some unexpected responses, but the ones who engaged early with you will know you (and you will know them) - a clear advantage.
Have a firm idea and a tested methodology to evaluate price and quality. Ask for reasonable and realistic things, be clear. Give scope for value adds. Don't try and devolve all the risk to the supplier, because less risk for you means higher prices.
By that time you will hopefully already know who you might want to work with and a tender formalises that process. Yes, there may still be surprises, but then the surprise may be a lower price or an innovative value add.
A bit of time and effort prior to the process starting will well be worth it.
(I have been a poacher and a gamekeeper in public sector procurement and know that it CAN be done well - with good outcomes)
Re: Not really the council's fault
a few years back the finance director of our government department had been courted by the sharks/consultants trying to outsource us. Suddenly we needed a best of bread HP openview monitoring tool costing hundreds of thousands, despite my requests for a far cheaper solarwinds solution being rejected for the last 5 years.
Our procurement team where all over it, our procurement guy liked to boast to me about all the offsite meetings he had had with prospective vendors and that he had chosen some tiny company somewhere as they had the best proposal.
Our procurement guy was ex facilities and had no IT background but an interest in photography.
Speaking to the consultant who arrived to install the overly convoluted solution (several servers for polling plus several servers for DB and several others for running the app), our procurement guy and the company MD spent most of the procurement meetings chatting about photography.
its fair to say the company wasn't chosen on its IT ability but more on its shared interests with our procurement guy.
Another way?
The only option they have here is to scrap the system and start again with another solution. They’re damned either way, but if the original problems have all been ironed out then I think sticking with what works is probably the best solution right now, albeit being the lesser of 2 evils.
Fair play to Dudley Council, they always make Birmingham City Council look competent.