Reading Borough Council to become next generation with Fujitsu and Oracle ERP Cloud

Fujitsu has announced that Reading Borough Council is extending its existing relationship with the company in order to help it move to and manage Oracle ERP Cloud (Oracle Financials Cloud), across all of its financial management systems. The deal will see Reading become one of the first organisations to adopt Oracle Financials Cloud in the UK, with a planned go-live in April 2014. The move highlights Reading’s commitment to high level service provisioning for its citizens and moves it into the category of next generation councils running on open architecture.

Wednesday, 29th January 2014 Posted 10 years ago in by Phil Alsop

The contract, which is worth £1.35 million over the three year term, will see Fujitsu configure Oracle Financials Cloud for the Council, as well as provide a number of additional services, including BACs, cheque runs and service support. The move to Oracle Financials Cloud will provide Reading with savings and enable more effective devolved financial management.

Oracle Financials Cloud demonstrates a true shift in the market for Councils looking to realise the benefits of ERP in the cloud. The solution provides richer reporting to budget holders, whilst most importantly reducing their operating cost. It also offers users a more intuitive service that can enable new employees to navigate the system far quicker than previous versions.

Richard Shuff, Business Development Lead within the Business & Application Services Division, UK & Ireland, Fujitsu commented: “The extension of our work with Reading Borough Council is testament to the excellent working relationship that has been built up with the Council’s team over the last decade. It also highlights the depth of trust within the partnership. Our objective through this new SaaS model is to ensure Reading is continuing to offer excellent service to their citizens and reduce costs at a time when this is a core objective for all organisations.”

Alan Cross, Head of Finance, Reading Borough Council added: “We decided to upgrade to Oracle Financials Cloud as it not only delivers us significant cost savings in these times of budgetary constraint but also provides genuine business benefit through significantly improved reporting at devolved levels, which our senior managers need. The SaaS option fits with our internal ICT strategy so we can achieve a number of benefits through our managed service with Fujitsu.”