Who They Are.

• Department with 12 divisions

• +10,000 staff

• Provide focused, fair and rapid access to justice

• Protects the rights of the people of NSW and delivers a range of essential legal, law enforcement and emergency services

• Administering courts, tribunals and alternative dispute resolution services 

• Advising the NSW Government on law and justice issues, and legal reforms 

Business Challenges.

• The department has expanded over time with multiple agencies including Youth Justice, Corrective Services, and Emergency Management joining the Courts and the principal department through Machinery of Government (MoG) changes.

• These agencies continued with legacy business practices and systems even after joining the principal department. 

• NSW government set a direction to move to standardised ERP processes and systems.

• De-centralised corporate services operations with diverse systems and business processes presented a strong business case to consolidate and transform the corporate services.

• The legacy HR and finance systems could not provide the operational efficiency much needed by the department to operate in the contemporary era, so they need to be replaced.

Project Scope.

• Standardise finance and HR business processes across the department.

• Develop an ERP Strategy.

• Go to market via EOI and tender to select an ERP SaaS and System Integrator.

• Initiate project to deliver an SAP project covering purchasing, GL accounting, cost accounting, accounts payable, accounts receivable, fixed asset accounting, project accounting, Readsoft invoice automation, travel and expenses, HR and payroll, and integration to frontline and reporting systems.

• Establish Corporate Shared Services.

• From June 2014 to June 2016.

Project Objectives.

• Adopt Whole of Government standards v5.0 (ARIS models) as the foundation for corporate finance and HR processes, and realign the department processes to them as much as practically possible. 

• Implement an Enterprise Resource Planning Solution-as-a-Service (SaaS) with modern capability to not only support an efficient corporate shared services operations but to harness its potential to drive strategic initiatives.

• Establish a common shared services operations underpinned by a common system, processes and architecture platform.

• Uplift master data quality through centralised management and governance, improving compliance and traceability.

• Capitalise on economies-of-scale improvement opportunities to drive operational efficiency.

The Corporate Services Transformation Journey.

• Establish program governance upon approval of business case.

• Establish a project to engage SMEs through a series of workshops to confirm alignment to Whole of Government standard processes and localise as necessary.

• Use the process standards as a basis to inform the corporate shared services sizing by identifying the relevant process steps across the level 3 business processes.

• Develop the ERP Strategy to identify a suitable technology platform to support the corporate shared services.

• Develop procurement strategy for SaaS, system integrator and implementation. Initiate RFI and Tender to shortlist service providers, negotiate and award contract to the successful vendor for a Proof-of-Concept project. Process standards were used to support the requirements in the RFI.

• Formulate project strategies for resourcing, change management, test management and data migration.

• Engage systems integrator and resources to set up and run the project to deliver the ERP SaaS.

Results.

• Standardised business processes on a common technology platform led to better quality data but there is still room for improvement.

• Full operational efficiencies could not be realised immediately as the corporate shared services operating model was new to the organisation and embracing the new ways of working took time. Efficiencies took a dip for a while before the processes became embedded.

• It was necessary to tweak some process (e.g. invoice processing) to align with the invoice automation capability after Go Live. 

• Legacy business practices were hard to change and concerted change management was key to breaking old habits.

• New integrated systems provide better reporting capability for the leadership team to make decisions and drive strategic initiatives.