Solihull Metropolitan Borough Council is a longstanding Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) customer, using Oracle 12.1.3 for HR, Payroll, Financials and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (OBIEE).

The Council's leadership team has committed to using Oracle for the next ten years and is considering the benefits of an eventual move to the cloud versus the cost of upgrading its EBS system.

Inoapps was engaged to undertake an EBS Health Check and an Operational Readiness Assessment as the organization considers its long-term roadmap.

The Council wanted to approach the project as a business change initiative rather than as a directive from IT. Mindful of this, Inoapps worked closely with key people from across The Council in a series of workshops to ensure widespread engagement with the project, providing the following services:

• A full review of The Council’s current Oracle landscape from not only a solution perspective but also from a business organization model perspective to ensure they have the right people in their team to support and enhance the system in future.
• A readiness assessment for the move to cloud which involved workshops and analysis of The Council’s Configurations, extensions, modifications, localizations and integrations (CEMLI), and identifying what they could become in the Cloud.
• Identification of 'quick wins' for The Council that will deliver rapid benefits with limited technology investments. This involved heat mapping of each business requirement against the technical complexity of the solution required.

A key aspect was understanding the fit between the Council’s current configuration and what it would look like in the cloud.

Using an external company to engage with the leadership team and other key employees in workshops helped to get buy in, across the organization, to the idea of a potential journey to cloud.

This has created a new conversation among leaders across the Council that will move the organization forward.