Bournemouth Borough Council streamlines finances with Oracle Financials Cloud and Version 1

Bournemouth Borough Council is a busy local authority serving the 186,000 residents of Bournemouth on England’s south coast. The council’s legacy Oracle system was struggling to cope with the additional strategic advice and support it needed to deliver. Compounding the problem were a variety of third-party systems that needed to integrate with the Oracle installation and a lack of investment and development in the now ten-year-old system.

The council had used Oracle E-Business Suite R11.5.10.2 for accountancy and payment for a decade, covering everything from the production of the statutory annual statement of accounts and statutory returns to monthly budget and project monitoring, alongside detailed forecasting. 

A shift to a more modern financial environment was needed. The council saw an opportunity for efficiencies provided by a unified financial management platform. The council’s goal was a system that would empower the team to make informed, strategic decisions via a self-contained system that didn’t require additional third-party systems or spiralling, unsustainable IT infrastructure costs.  

Bournemouth Borough Council selected Version 1 to spearhead the transformation. This would be one of the UK’s first implementations of Oracle Financials Cloud, and we made good use of the platform’s inherent flexibility to minimise customisation and optimise out-of-the-box features, aligning with the council’s workflows.

Bournemouth Borough Council now benefits from a system that simplifies reporting and data migration and eases the burden on IT and accountancy teams within the council. Oracle Financials Cloud had given the council greater insight into procurement data and delivered resource planning technology, crucially while reducing the upfront costs of heavy in-house IT infrastructure. Bournemouth County Council can face the next decade with a system that makes future enhancements simple, allowing its team to keep pace with new technology as it becomes available.  

Outcomes

• Implemented Oracle Financials Cloud, leveraging the latest functionalities for optimal performance. 
• Replaced complex, disparate systems with a unified cloud solution, eliminating manual data transfers. 
• Prioritised configuration over customization, aligning the council with industry-standard practices. 
• Delivered comprehensive training for smooth adoption of the new system. 
• Established intuitive reporting and analytics dashboards for real-time insights. 
• Reduced long-term costs by transitioning to a cloud-based infrastructure.