Interviews

iTrent hosting promotes shared HR service success at Tandridge District Council

Stuart Mitchenall, head of business support at Tandridge District Council, explains the work done as part of a shared service project in East Surrey in collaboration with MidlandHR.

Tandridge District Council began their shared service journey as part of the East Surrey Improvement Partnership (ESIP), which was designed to bring together a number of East Surrey authorities in a shared service project.

Aimed at delivering real improvements and efficiencies, HR was highlighted as a key area where strategic savings could be realised.

Scale for success

From the beginning, Tandridge, as the lead organisation and a long-term MidlandHR customer, knew that scalability would be vital.

Stuart Mitchenall, head of business support at Tandridge District Council, explained: “When we selected iTrent for this project a major factor was its inherent scalability – each time a new council joined we knew we could add significant numbers of employees to the system without any problems.”

A secure IT infrastructure was installed between the councils so Tandridge was able to host iTrent for the other partners. First to trial the hosted iTrent solution was Epsom and Ewell, and the positive results enabled Tandridge to extend the offer to the other councils.

Mitchenall continued: “We knew this arrangement would offer significant advantages to all of the councils thanks to the results of the work with Epsom and Ewell, and because a single council acting as lead can procure services on more competitive terms. Our partners could benefit from a zero footprint solution in addition to removing the burden of compliance because iTrent is automatically updated to cover any legislative changes.”

Partnership expands across Surrey

In response to a funding gap across almost all local authorities in 2009, a new partnership of all Surrey local authorities was formed. Known as the Surrey First Partnership (SFP), the objective was to promote collaboration to increase efficiency of delivery of IT services and offset the likely ill-effects of the funding gap.

Several authorities within the partnership were considering changing their HR and payroll systems provider; only the three MidlandHR users had no intention of changing. Many hoping to change supplier had already identified MidlandHR, only for their plans to be put on hold by the funding gap.

Tandridge hosting iTrent on their behalf meant the other councils could benefit from MidlandHR’s solution at a lower cost.

Waverley, the first council to implement iTrent as part of the partnership, reduced implementation and running costs by a further 25-30% from its initial estimates. This impressive saving helped to convince other authorities to make the leap to the partnership model.

A collaborative approach

Tandridge created a single iTrent support team for all of the councils involved, greatly reducing the cost and complexity of employing individual teams within each council. One council has produced fiveyear savings of £25,000 by opting to use iTrent and overall, the support team is on course to deliver savings of £125,000 over five years.

This collaborative approach has also delivered hard efficiencies through procurement savings. A new legal model has cut the time and cost of procurement by as much as £15,000 for a three-month project. One authority estimated savings of nearly 12% on implementation and fiveyear operating costs.

Mitchenall said: “The cost savings speak for themselves. We are now regularly seeing savings which have surpassed our initial estimates and that is the direct result of collaboration with MidlandHR and our partner councils.”

Future plans

Future plans include the production of a Surrey Business Pack, enabling new partners to quickly adapt to the common software framework and reducing implementation costs by an estimated 20 percent over five years. Another potential benefit, further increasing efficiency, will be the ability to temporarily recruit staff from a partner organisation.

The ultimate goal is to expand the service to cover all of Surrey’s local authorities. Mitchenall commented: “Even councils which were a bit sceptical at first have realised the merits of the project. Since we published the savings achieved potential partners are much more inquisitive, so as a result we are hoping to expand the partnership further to deliver greater savings to more Surrey councils.”

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