US software giant Oracle has secured a major deal with the South Australian government to replace the legacy core financial management system that serves more than 50 agencies across the state.
The Department of Treasury and Finance has selected Oracle’s Fusion Cloud ERP offering to replace the Masterpiece system, which has been in place for more than 30 years and has reached end of life.
The department approached the market in December 2022 for a cloud-based financial management system to replace Masterpiece, having spent the preceding two years working on a high-level business case with KPMG.
By July last year, Oracle had reportedly firmed as the favorite in a negotiation process that original tender documents show kicked off in April, despite the company’s involvement in a 2011 project at SA Health that suffered at $40.5 million cost blowout.
Microsoft, SAP, Infor, TechnologyOne and Workday were also in the running for the government-wide contract, which was estimated to be worth up to $15 million over its initial four-year term.
Oracle signed the contract in September, the company said on Tuesday, four months later than the government had hoped. It will now spend the next three years constructing and deploying Oracle Cloud ERP and Oracle Fusion ERP Analytics.
Announcing the win, Oracle said the new system would allow the government to “standardise its financial processes and expand business insights to increase productivity, reduce costs and improve controls”.
Shared Services SA, the unit within Treasury that provides payroll, accounting and other finance services to government agencies, is expected to be a key user of the new financial management system.
Mark Carey, the executive director of Shared Service SA, said the new system will allow the government to “improve the speed and accuracy of financial processes and expand business insights for decision-making and resource allocation”.
“As part of the department’s vision of being a world class Treasury, we need to adopt new technology to accelerate digital transformation and deliver high quality financial services to our customers,” Mr Carey said in a statement.
Oracle vice president for applications in Australia and New Zealand, Meredith Rowan, said the company is “excited to be working with the South Australian government to support the organization in its digital transformation journey”.
Last month, the state government signed a four-year contract with Salesforce for a MuleSoft IPaaS platform that will serve as an interface between the new financial management system and other systems.
The iPaaS agreement follows a five-year agreement between the state government and Salesforce in May 2023, which replaced an earlier whole-of-government agreement in 2015 agreement.
Do you know more? Contact James Riley via Email.