Video transcript: Helping Harrow Council see beyond change

Transcript

Charlie Stewart

Local government has a lot of systems. We we run 300 diverse products. It’s been the golden desire of every local authority to be able to join all that data together to make things better for residents.

Harrow, like a lot of councils, hadn’t really modernised in technology or processes or in fact the way we worked.

We had very archaic IT in a lot of places, and it was telling.

And at that time, enter PwC who were looking with Microsoft to get a local authority partner to introduce Microsoft Dynamics for the first time in local government in the UK.

Steve Crook

We spoke to Harrow about taking a different approach. Given that they already had a lot of Microsoft in their enterprise architecture, rather than ask, ‘Which technology best fits our current ways of working’, why not ask a different question, which is ‘Is there any reason why Microsoft wouldn’t be a good fit?’

Lorna Ward

It’s about using what we call the adopt not adapt route.

What it means is that you adopt the standard way of working of the technology. So, in this case Microsoft Dynamics, rather than trying to adapt the technology to how you work today.

Steve Crook

The reason you do that is because you can implement the system much more quickly, it’s much less costly, and you can benefit from the upgrades, just as with our iPhones and our androids, when a new version of the operating system gets launched overnight, we just pick it up the next day and start using it.

Charlie Stewart

We could see that actually it gave us all the benefits with not just Microsoft easy to integrate systems, but also a good partner in PwC to drive that forward.

Lorna Ward

The partnership, that we developed for Harrow was very much a three-way partnership and it was recognising that all three parties, that’s Harrow, that’s PwC and Microsoft, all had a vital role to play.

Charlie Stewart

We have a large budget, which of course comes from the taxpayer and we are absolutely required to make informed decisions so that we’re getting every bang for our buck out of that money.

Lorna Ward

I’ve got a huge amount of pride in this programme. It’s the first time that Microsoft Dynamics has been implemented within a local council. The partnership that we have between Harrow, PwC and Microsoft has enabled us to be successful in breaking that new ground.

Charlie Stewart

I think with much more joined up systems and at the core of it an ERP, and F&O that gives us the ability to mine that data better we will be making much more informed decisions to the benefit of the taxpayer.