2276 - Corporate Systems.

Descriptions

Essex County Council (The Authority) is seeking to put in place an Agreement for Corporate systems and support services for the Essex County Council. As part of the requirement the Authority is seeking to obtain flexibility with regards to its ability to charge and trade in reliance on the procured Corporate Systems with third parties in the public sector. These public sector bodies include but are not limited to:— Essex County Council including partly owned joint ventures, subsidiaries and Local Authority Trading Vehicles and Companies and any of its statutory successors and further legal entities / organisations created as a result of re-organisation or organisational changes occurring during the life of the procured Agreement,— NHS bodies, including Primary Care Trusts, Clinical Commissioning Groups and joint NHS/Local Authority bodies,— County, Unitary, District, Borough & Parish Councils,— The central buying consortium (www.cbconline.org.uk),— Fire & rescue authorities,--- police authorities and the Police Commissioner,— Educational establishments [in England and Wales, including those maintained by the Department for Children, Schools and Families including Schools (including academies and trusts), Universities and Colleges and private and independent schools (including Free schools),— Voluntary Sector Charities,— and/or other private organisations acting as managing agents or procuring on behalf of these public sector or public interest bodies.— Third sector organisations whose activities involve the delivery of public services to any of the above public bodies.— Housing Associations and Registered Social Landlords.— Central Government Departments, Executive Agencies and NDPBs.— The Private Sector including Care Homes.Whilst the initial emphasis is on the delivery of services to Essex County Council the Authority already provides services to certain third parties, and it is intended that it will charge and/ or trade with other Public Sector bodies named above, and to the classes of organisation described above within the County of Essex and across the UK and therefore the Authority is seeking flexibility to enable it to do this under the Contract in connection with licensing. The council requires an agile corporate services infrastructure that can flex to accommodate changes as they occur, support the council's charging and trading ambitions and to support the business as it moves through the next stage of its transformation programme to an outcomes-focused commissioning organisation. The services described above are not exhaustive and in order to maximise resources over the life of the proposed contract and allow flexibility for potential increases or decreases in requirements over the services period as the Authority changes and as its charging and trading aspirations change, the Authority reserves the right to include additional services related to the corporate services which will assist it in delivering a comprehensive range of services.The services will be a fully managed service, preferably infrastructure free for ECC, and comprise:A. An integrated Human Resource (HR) management solution including case management, resource management, talent management, performance management, learning and development and e-recruitment.B. An integrated Finance solution including general ledger, purchase ordering, purchase card statement management, content/catalogue management ,supplier management, invoice matching and accounts payable, accounts receivable, cash management and fixed assets underpinned by the organisation's scheme of delegation for financial management.C. An integrated payroll and expense management solution, which will interface with the finance and HR management solutions.D. An integrated planning, budgeting and forecasting solution that supports the modelling of multiple scenarios and provides visibility of the drivers underpinning financial performance.E. A Strategic Sourcing system covering all aspects of spend analysis and enrichment, tendering, project execution and management, contract and supplier performance management and reporting.F. A business intelligence solution that provides a single version of the truth across the organisation by integrating corporate data with data from line of business systems to deliver meaningful performance based reporting, and provides a solid foundation for the performance, decision making and resource management journey.G. Tools that can seamlessly integrate or interoperate corporate solutions with existing line of business systems.H. Core set of hierarchies, approval rules and dynamic workflow to be applied across the solution in line with policies and schemes of delegation.All solutions must be dynamically scalable up and down, flexible and fit for purpose in terms of performance and usability and enable a culture of self service.The desired solution is to provide configuration, integration, testing, implementation, hosting and support to all of the above elements.The scope of the Contract may change as part of the Competitive Dialogue Process.The services are required to be provided primarily to the Authority, although the Authority may also be seeking to provide certain traded services to third parties as outlined above.The Agreement will have a term of 5 years, with the option to extend for up to 2 years.We will be holding a Bidders conference on Thursday 7.3.2013 in Chelmsford. Further information will be available in the PQQ documents and shared with Bidders who express an interest in participating in this opportunity.Bidders must contact ECC to request to be invited to participate in this procurement by following these instructions:1. Send an email with your organisation name in the subject title field to email2workspace-prod+ECC+WS242358092+adkq@ansmtp.ariba.com asking to be invited to this event and providing your contact name and Supplier ID/User ANID from your Ariba registration details.2. If you have more than one registered user who you want invited to the event, provide the name(s) of each registered user in your request as it may not be possible to include additional users at a later stage.If you are not registered in Ariba at all, go to http://ecc.supplier.ariba.com/ad/register/SSOActions?type=full and follow the instructions to register, and then follow steps 1 and 2 above. (PLEASE NOTE: 35 % completion (i.e. mandatory fields only: organisation/user details, commodity, sales territory) is the minimum required for your Ariba cloud registration, you do not need to reach 100 % completion.)3. Once invited you can log back into the portal and access the information and attachments relating to the opportunity. You will also be able to use the Message Board.4. Further instructions, guides and assistance on how to take part in an event can be found on the Supplier portal site under the help option on the top menu bar.