LBWF’s new back office Oracle Fusion networking platform: management miracle or cash drain?

In December 2021 LBWF decided to modernise its back office by installing a cloud based networking platform made by the leading American company Oracle (‘Big Red’).

Subsequently, this innovation has been described as a management triumph, responsible for integrating ways of working across the Town Hall.

However, as is often the case with LBWF, careful research reveals a more complicated picture, with successes, true, but also problems, the latter now requiring repeated amounts of additional cash.

The story begins in 2003, the year that LBWF purchased a networking platform made by the German company SAP.

This linked together the finance, procurement, human resources and business support departments, and at first worked well. 

However, over time it started to degrade, leading to ‘the proliferation of off-system processing’, which sometimes involved staff laboriously having to enter data by hand.

In 2013, SAP provided an update, but by 2020, there was little doubt that this, too, would need replacing, not least because, as the company itself admitted, it was ‘drawing towards end of life’, so that ‘significant improvements’ in the future would not be ‘achievable or worthwhile’. 

As a result, LBWF carried out a thorough review of the available solutions, and, following in the footsteps of several other UK local authorities, in the end plumped for Oracle, specifically its Fusion platform. 

The cabinet member responsible, Cllr. Paul Douglas, commented:

‘With Oracle Fusion…Waltham Forest Council will be able to take advantage of the cloud to break down organisational silos, standardise administrative processes, and securely manage finance, HR, planning and procurement on a single integrated platform. The Oracle implementation will enable the Council to automate financial planning and forecasting to improve management insights and decision making, and adapt its people strategy using accurate data and insights from across the employee lifecycle’.

As to the business case for Oracle Fusion, that was deemed confidential, but a Cabinet paper of December 2021 did at least reveal that the changeover was forecast to cost £12m. and be completed by the summer of 2024.

Thereafter, there was a flurry of activity. LBWF set up a dedicated team to oversee the project; purchased the necessary licenses from Oracle, which didn’t come cheap; and brought in Evosys (a Global Oracle Cloud Partner) to carry out the taxing job of nuts and bolts implementation at a cost of c. £6m.. 

With rather less publicity, LBWF also hired Group Finance Solutions Consulting Ltd., a specialist in software development and the internet, awarding it (without explanation) seven separate contracts together worth c. £650,000.

The cumulative outcome seemed a triumph. Much of the new platform went live in September 2023, and by April of the following year the trade press could report that LBWF had ‘successfully migrated its finance, procurement, and HR processes to the cloud using Oracle, enabling streamlined operations and improved system functionality’.

So far so good.

But in 2025, it became clear that the transfer to Oracle Fusion had not been as smooth as was initially reported.

In January, LBWF awarded the small software solutions company Newtrality Ltd. a £176,252 contract to examine ‘Oracle Stabilisation’, and in particular: 

(a) ‘Conduct a comprehensive analysis of the Finance and iProcurement modules within the Oracle…system…to identify and address the key issues and challenges that are hindering the full adoption and optimisation of these modules’; and

(b) ‘Review the current Oracle licensing to ensure that it aligns with the organisation’s requirements and usage patterns’.

Shortly thereafter, LBWF decided that ‘Oracle stabilisation’ was a big enough issue to require further resources still, and sums of first £354,000 and then nearly £1m. were earmarked for this purpose, though without any public explanation of how they would be spent, or which firms would be contracted to help.

It’s illuminating to end with some context.

In the past few years, a wide range of UK institutions, encompassing government departments, local authorities, and corporates, have all installed Oracle Fusion.

In many cases, they are reaping the promised benefits.

But sometimes there have been problems, even expensive problems. Perhaps most notoriously, after Birmingham City Council decided to install Oracle, it has been so beset by failures and delays that costs have ballooned from £20m. to £170m. plus.

LBWF is not in Birmingham’s league. 

Nevertheless, the recent decision to commit large sums for ‘stabilisation’ is worrying, and whether that will be the end of the matter is by no means certain.