The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) serves nearly 150,000 residents across some of London’s most vibrant communities. As a local authority, teams manage everything from housing and social services to traffic and transport improvements, requiring fast and reliable access to critical data to coordinate operations across multiple departments.
To improve efficiency, transparency, and the delivery of services for residents, the Council has now moved its core business functions from the Hampshire County Council shared services SAP model to Oracle Fusion Cloud Applications Suite.
A proven solution for greater control
Previously, our teams faced rigid processes shared across multiple boroughs, making it difficult to evolve and drive improvements at speed in our core business operations. For instance, to improve accuracy, we needed greater oversight on the self-service input of data about our staffing and budgets. Any changes depended on reaching agreement across all partners operating from the shared service, slowing down the pace of progress for us. We needed a solution that gave us better control over our data and processes, so our employees could concentrate more time on supporting our residents.
With a focus on adopting a flexible and proven solution, and with advice from our peers in local government, we procured Oracle Fusion Applications. We selected Version 1 and Civiteq, members of Oracle’s partner programme, as our trusted implementation partners.
Data-driven decisions for improved services
With Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), and Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM), we have a single integrated cloud platform to break down organisational silos and securely manage finance, procurement, and HR data across council departments. Our teams are supported with enhanced processes, expanded insights, increased productivity, and an elevated employee experience.
Budget managers now have real-time control over their budgets and financial data, with the ability to see spend-to-date, commitments, and transactions instantly.. They can quickly run reports and input forecasts, enabling data-driven decisions, more accurate scenario modelling, and the ability to meet government compliance regulations.
HR leaders benefit from streamlined processes, making it easier to generate more detailed insights about the workforce and adapt our people strategy using accurate data from across the employee lifecycle. With the features we now have, HR teams can focus on handling more complex questions and areas of support, while employees can quickly find the information they need to resolve common queries on their own. What’s more, RBKC employees can access self-service HR functions to better manage tasks including annual leave requests and updating personal details.
Building a digital-first culture
Successfully transforming at this scale required a deep cultural shift across the organisation, including investing in robust training programmes to ensure our teams have the skills to successfully move to this new system. Oracle Guided Learning has provided critical support, for instance with step-by-step guides and push notifications embedded into the applications, to accelerate user adoption and decrease the volume of requests handled by support teams. To simplify processes, meet local government compliance requirements, and improve our ability to capitalise on new capabilities in Oracle Fusion Applications’ quarterly updates, we have followed an “adopt not adapt” implementation approach.
As we look ahead, I’m genuinely excited about the data-driven innovations and new services we can offer to our community with Oracle Fusion Applications. With greater control over our processes and an embedded culture of continual improvement driven by our teams, we can take advantage of the most advanced technology, including the latest in AI, and work with our partners to better serve our residents.
In choosing Oracle Fusion Applications, RBKC joins local government and public sector organisations including the London Borough of Waltham Forest, Suffolk County Council, Lambeth Council, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP), the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA), the Ministry of Justice (MoJ), and the Home Office.
