Decision details

The City of York Council (CYC) currently uses Midland HR (MHR) iTrent as its HR and Payroll system, The existing 3-year contract with Insight Direct UK, subcontracted to MHR, expires on 31 October 2024 with no option for extension. A review of the current MHR iTrent system, alongside alternative supplier product options, contract terms and implementation costs were conducted in late 2023. A business case outlining four possible options was presented to the ICT board on 7 December 2023. A move to a provider or shared service model would incur additional project resource costs and consultancy fees in the region of £1M+ which was cost prohibitive. The ICT board decided to direct award a contract to Softcat as the prime contractor and sub-contract all deliverables to MHR as the solution provider via a direct award framework. MHR no longer permits on-premises clients so this decision will require a project to move to a cloud hosted service. The commencement of the project was authorised by the ICT board and the re-contract was confirmed as routine under the contract procedure rules by Director of Finance Debbie Mitchell (10th October 2023), Director of Governance and Monitoring Officer Bryn Roberts (11th October 2023) and Head of Procurement Chloe Wilcox, (19th June 2024).

CYC are currently on an Insight Direct UK drop dead contract expiry 31/10/2024 with no option to extend and given the timescales it would take to see through option 3 (procure a new system), it was very ambitious to do so in less than 12 months however, we carried out some research to look at other competitors on the market to compare against MHR. The move to a new system and provider or shared service model would require a larger project team with resource from HR, Payroll, Business Intelligence, and ICT to implement, it will also require manager time to attend training sessions etc. The project resource costs, and consultancy fees could be in the region of £1M+. MHR currently meets all contractual elements / SLA’s, and we are satisfied that this level of service will continue. Whilst option 1 (Ask MHR to offer an on-premise contract renewal) would have eased the current pressure to move to the Cloud, MHR later indicated this was not possible.
Decision: Option 2 Re-contract with MHR and move to a cloud hosted solution. Decision Made by: A move to a new system and provider or shared service model would incur additional project resource costs, and consultancy fees in the region of £1M+. Decision made at ICT board April 2024.

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