The Department of Finance of Australia adopts SAP S/4HANA for its GovERP.
ITNews reported that Australia’s Department of Finance had chosen the SAP S/4HANA platform for its GovERP, a new common enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
The talks for the plans for the centrally managed ERP platform began in the third quarter of 2019. The plan to bid to make the corporate and financial systems standardised across the six shared services hubs of the government, which were introduced in 2016. In 2017, the Department of Finance hosted a market day for whole-of-government ERP panel and shared the plans for the hubs.
The hubs, which service the core transactions of 73 agencies’ corporate service needs, were the result of the whole of government shared services system.
The adoption of SAP S/4HANA was a result of the need to replace five of the six hubs’ existing separate SAP-based ERP systems that are about to reach its end-of-life by the year 2025. One of the hubs assigned in the Australian Taxation Office, the Services Australia, the Department of Treasury, the Department of Finance, the Department of Industry, and the Department of Foreign Affairs, was a non-SAP system.
The Department of Finance of Australia shared in its annual report that the GovERP allows hubs to invest once in a new ERP.
The annual report says:
“GovERP will allow the hubs to invest once in a new ERP and share the asset, avoiding the cost of each hub investing separately for the same capability.”
Finance’s shared service ERP transformation group is managing the hubs and leading the design and development of a prototype. The prototype is expected to be handed over to the agencies to be trialed within the year.
Despite the ongoing efforts to develop the prototype, the department said that it would be based on the “existing platforms used by the Hubs. The decision on the core technology solution expected at the end of 2019 was not made.
A spokesperson interviewed by ITNews clarified in a statement:
“No decision has been made on the core ERP platform underpinning GovERP.”
However, the spokesperson also said that the shared services provider hubs are collaborating to do the necessary discovery work to inform common ERP solutions. The spokesperson added that the work would be based on the platforms that are already existing, owned, and used by the Hubs, which include SAP solutions and other market approaches when necessary.
All these changed when the industry advisory released an official statement saying that Finance has finally chosen SAP S/4HANA as its preferred core technology solution to develop the prototype.
The Finance department shared that the first phase of the initiative will develop a prototype of a foundation ERP platform that will be utilised for the trials across the provider hubs that are already existing users of an SAP-based ERP.
As of the latest, the Finance department is preparing to put the prototype into the project delivery phase, which will involve the procuration of cloud-based complimentary products and services as well as integration with a core SAP S/4HANA platform.
The department will hold an industry briefing on the 17th of February.