Leader of quartet of departments uniting operations on software infrastructure is advertising a contract worth almost £10m and covering assessment and validation of the project’s governance, planning and training measures
The Department for Work and Pensions is seeking a commercial partner to provide additional delivery and change-management expertise to the rollout of the £2.5bn Synergy shared services scheme.
A freshly published commercial notice reveals that the DWP is inviting bids for a £9.6m, two-year engagement with “a new client-side delivery partner to support the deployment, embedding and operational delivery of the ERP solution and end-to-end business processes” being implemented via the Synergy programme.
Forming part of the Government Major Projects Portfolio, Synergy will see the DWP, Home Office, Ministry of Justice, and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs unite on a centralised and cloud-based Oracle back-office software infrastructure, with deployment led by IBM. The two firms were last year awarded deals cumulatively worth £850m to support the quartet of departments – which collectively form one of five ‘clusters’ across government each adopting shared services.
The “delivery partner” will support IBM and the DWP’s own deployment teams in five defined areas: programme delivery; implementation; business change; readiness assessment; and enablement of the Synergy Shared Services Hub (SSSH) facility.
As part of its programme delivery remit, the chosen supplier will be asked to “review and validate the overall programme delivery framework using their strategic delivery expertise and industry best practice”, the notice says. This will include assessing current governance models, expectations for benefits to be achieved, and transition plans.
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On which note, the implementation portion of the agreement will see the provider “apply their implementation expertise to review and validate all readiness, transition, and post-go-live arrangements”.
In supporting the Synergy project with business change, the delivery partner will assess and advise the programme on its “approach to user adoption, communication, behavioural change, and stakeholder engagement”.
The contracted firm will also “be responsible for developing and delivering the full readiness and learning offer for the Synergy Programme, [which] includes conducting training needs analysis… creating a blended learning strategy, designing and delivering department-specific learning materials, ensuring alignment with business change and go-live timelines, and establishing a centralised knowledge repository”.
The ultimate intention is that “the supplier will ensure the workforce is equipped with the capabilities required to adopt and sustain ERP-enabled processes”, according to the contract notice.
The final area covered by the contract – support for the SSSH facility – is intended to make sure the “that the proposed operating model, governance structures, transition approach, and capability planning align with best practice for public sector shared services”.
The notice adds: “[The supplier’s] expertise will help ensure the SSSH is scalable, strategically aligned, and capable of delivering the intended benefits across departments.”
The DWP’s plan is to create a single-supplier framework to deliver these services, although “bidding as a consortium, or as a prime contractor with the use of a range of subcontractors, will be permitted to encourage the delivery of the best overall solution”.
The notice indicates that invitations to tended have already been issued to certain candidates, with bids for the engagement open only until Friday.
Recent transparency documents revealed that the Synergy programme has experienced “early delays” and a reduction in the benefits the programme is forecast to deliver.
