Northern Ireland Assembly Commission - Corporate Systems Project Pre-Market Engagement - BR-059-2020

Description

****THIS IS A PRE-MARKET ENGAGEMENT EXERCISE ONLY**** The Northern Ireland Assembly is currently reviewing its existing corporate support systems, namely; financial management, human resources, payroll and procurement. These are standalone systems, with little integration. Existing software contracts are nearing the end of their contract period, thus providing the opportunity to look at alternative solutions which can deliver the needs of the Assembly Commission in a more efficient and effective way. There is a project team in place, who will be supported by an external consultant to examine and advise on the potential solutions available in the market which can best meet our needs. The Procurement Team is working with the Project Manager to examine the most appropriate methods to procure the solutions and services required. We recognise that the replacement of corporate systems such as these always come with certain risks and that these increase considerably when we increase the number of critical systems being replaced, as is the case for this project. However, one of our key objectives is the achievement of better integration between processes and systems to achieve improved efficiency, effectiveness and utilisation of corporate information. We further recognise that to achieve this we need to take this opportunity to evaluate our processes, re-engineer these and implement systems that supports our objectives. In order to do this, we would like to take this opportunity to engage with the market to help raise awareness of the project, inform the business case, and procurement strategy, explore the capacity of the market to deliver solution(s), and gain an understanding of the feasibility of our requirements. We also hope that any potential risks or issues can be identified and allow us to take the necessary actions to mitigate these. The ultimate purpose is to ensure that we conduct this major exercise in a way that delivers the best processes and system solution(s) to fully support the various back office functions, gain maximum user buy in, facilitate staff engagement and mitigate the potential for any breakdown of any of these key systems. We therefore invite the market to participate in this exercise by completing and returning the attached questionnaire.