SAP to Help Birmingham City Council to Achieve Savings of £1bn Over 10 Years

Service Birmingham, a strategic partnership between Capita and Birmingham City Council, will help to deliver savings and improve services at Europe’s largest Local Authority

London - October 19, 2006 - SAP, the world’s leading supplier of business software, is delighted to announce the biggest software deal ever in UK Local Government. It has been working with its strategic partners Capita and Axon since the beginning of 2006 in order to help the UK and Europe’s largest local authority, Birmingham City Council, to begin to transform the effectiveness of its public service delivery over the next ten years.

Service Birmingham, the joint venture between Birmingham City Council and Capita, is a new and innovative approach to delivering a wide range of services to support the Council's business transformation strategy. The Council aims to significantly improve services to the people of Birmingham and expects to save £100m a year as a consequence of a number of transformation programmes achieving at least a 15% productivity gain over the next five years.

Paul Tilsley, Deputy Leader of Birmingham City Council welcomed the deal: “I am delighted that Service Birmingham has put in place this deal with SAP. It will be key to achieving the Council’s ambition of more efficient services which better meet the needs of the people we serve.”

The Largest Local Government Business Transformation Project in Europe

“SAP applications are fundamental in helping us deliver our business transformation goals,” Brendan Arnold, Director of Corporate Finance at Birmingham City Council said. “For example, we will revolutionise purchasing across the city, utilising innovative technologies such as eProcurement and e-tendering and leveraging Birmingham's vast purchasing muscle for the first time.”

The Birmingham City Council Enterprise license makes almost the entire SAP product set available to the Council, including the SAP Business Suite (Finance, Human Resources and Procurement, CRM), its integration platform Netweaver and a host of independent software applications from SAP partners. Together these will support world-class, standardised management and business processes such as service to cash and procure to pay along with a range of standardised reporting and integration processes.

“SAP is delighted that Birmingham and its partners have chosen SAP to support the council’s transformation. By integrating its processes Birmingham will be able to greatly improve its efficiency, effectiveness and productivity enabling it to better meet the needs of its citizens. SAP looks forward to working in partnership with Service Birmingham as it sets ground breaking standard in Local Government service delivery and corporate efficiency ” said Steve Morgan, SAP Local Government Director.

About Service Birmingham
Service Birmingham is an innovative Strategic Partnership between Birmingham City Council and the Capita Group which will support transformation in the Council, improving services and contributing to its efficiency agenda. The principle focus of Service Birmingham Ltd is on the provision of cost-effective and world class ICT services and supporting the Council in achieving its Business Transformation objectives.