Europe's biggest local authority will not have a fully operational cash register system until April next year, three years after it went live on an Oracle ERP system designed to do the job.
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Birmingham City Council's plan to switch from SAP to software from Big Red has seen its budget balloon from £20 million ($26 million) to a potential £131 million ($170 million) in a project once hailed by Oracle co-founder and CTO Larry Ellison as a examples of the company's competitive profits.
Although the new system went live in April 2022, which was already almost 18 months late, the council in mid-England has been unable to create auditable accounts using the Oracle system while experiencing acute bank reconciliation and cash management issues. The ongoing software problems have been exacerbated by an equal pay requirement; together they effectively bankrupted the authority last September.
The council had implemented Oracle with significant customization — seemingly against its original plans — and since the disaster struck in 2022, it plans to re-implement Oracle Fusion "out of the box."
