Partnership between the Isle of Wight Council and EPI-USE Labs: Two years later

Hello, everybody. Thanks so much for joining us. I'm Nikki Cox, and I'm the cloud and services account manager here at EPI-USE Labs. And today, I'm really pleased to be joined by Dean Finlayson of the Isle of Wight Council where he's the Corporate Applications Lead. Many will you of you will have heard of Dean at previous user groups that we've had. And there, he talked about his journey to the cloud with his SAP environment. We thought it would be interesting for you all to find out how things went after the honeymoon period was over when the project had finished. So, Dean, hello and welcome. Hello. Can I just start with a quick overview for those people who perhaps haven't heard from you before at the other user groups that you've attended? Can you give us the details of the project that we helped you with? It was your migration to the private cloud. What was it that we did with you? We were in quite a bad position really with our SAP estate. The hardware was quite aged, around about nine years old at the time, and we were on old versions of the Operating system and old version of SQL, 2005. We were struggling to upgrade the systems because of that. We were limited as to what kernel versions we could use, and we were in a position whereby if we hadn't, upgraded our hardware and thereby been able to upgrade our software, we would have been unable to put the HR CLCs in for the following year. So we went out to tender. Yeah, FPU Slabs won it, which we were very pleased with having worked with FPUs, you know, on several occasions before. We've got other software from FPUs. And, you basically, moved us to the cloud. We went through that exercise with your guys, worked well with the, South African guys, Bradley, etcetera, and, moved all of our estate, bit by bit starting with dev, moving on to, and then eventually with our live, systems and moved those into the, the cloud environment. As part of that, actually, we took on your Basis managed service as well. I had two people in my, my team who were Basis engineers, both of whom were approaching retirement. And, actually, it dovetailed really nicely that we were able to, sort of let them wander off into retirement, and move over to a very good, managed service with yourselves, on our new lovely cloud environment. Excellent. Excellent. So that was actually Unbelievable. Yeah. So it's obviously a long time since the migration to the private cloud and you've been using our managed services since. So how has that whole experience been? Has it been easy? Has there been obviously you've referred to the fact your retirees haven't looked over their shoulder on their way to the sunset. How does it work for you? I think it's worked very well. As I say, it as it did, it dovetailed in, with the, other changes that we wanted to make. But, actually, the, the team at EpiEuse have made it easy for us, really. They're, the, Basis guys are really nice. I say guys. It's actually one guy and two gals. But they're all very easy to work with, very knowledgeable, and they've helped us overcome what have been really fairly minor obstacles over the last few years, things like upgrading our, SQL database. And, I think we've got a couple of other pieces of work on the go with you at the moment as well-to-do with the payslips and p sixties. But it's been quite smooth and, I think it's all down to their expertise and, sort of professional, ways that has helped us do that. That's really good to hear because I think that's what anybody wants. It's it needs to be as claim free as possible and, for you to feel like we're an addition to your team if you like and it just makes life much easier when it works that way. Yeah. So we have very good meetings. Yes. Yes. I am. Yes. So I understand. Yeah. So three years have passed and obviously we've been helping you. What sort of challenges are you as an organization facing? Most people particularly in your sector, but actually in this world everywhere, cost reduction is key on their mind. Is that the sorts of things that are troubling you? What sort of challenges have you had? Yeah. It's been cost has been a big factor for local authorities for a number of years, with huge savings having to be made, you know, imposed by central government. And, obviously, that gets a little bit tougher every year as you have to say more. We've recently actually moved to a contract with Remedy Street as a third-party support provider. Mhmm. And, obviously, FEUs have been part of that, and they've helped us with that. And, we have sort of tried to build a good relationship with, with FPUs and Remedy Street and, you know, hopefully, all working together. And so far, that seems to be, seems to be working quite well. As an authority, COVID has had a huge impact on us as it will, as you say, with everybody. All of a sudden, we're working from home as I am now, as you can see here from the, the nice decor behind me in my spare room, and yours. Yeah. Yeah. So it's been a tough year. We've had security, that's been quite high profile for us. Not just SAP security, but, generally, we've moved to, multifactor authentication, as an authority over the last few months. Obviously, I'm making accessibility really for everybody. So people having access to our systems, including SAP, and having it cloud based has, has helped with that. I think that's made it, made it easier. As far as the users are concerned, it hasn't caused any impact to them of speed. And speed is quite critical when you're, you know, doing the processing in SAP. A lot of our other systems that are in house hosted, and that's not meant as a criticism of our in house team, but we haven't been able to maintain the same sort of speed, throughput levels that, the SAP systems have. And that's been really pleasing, and it's made our life a lot easier knowing we haven't got to worry about that or have any concerns that there might be issues with that so it's been really good. Yes. I with the whole COVID thing, people's plans of how their systems were going to be run are completely out the window, never could anybody have anticipated that so many of your user base would be working from home. So it sounds like that move to the cloud happened at a fortunate tortuous time It did. With COVID here. Yeah. Well. And internal sort of on premise environments that you have I suppose struggle with your internal network and not being able to get out to the world worldwide if you like. Yeah. So, I'm I'm guessing your move to Rimini Street was predominantly cost based, but you felt that the managed services team have helped and supported you on that journey? Yes. Definitely. Yes. Yeah. They've been party to that. They've been in, in the meetings that we've had with Rimini Street. And, they now liaise direct between the two. When there's, you know, work needed to be done, Remedy Street will contact the Basis team on occasion, usually copying me into some on, obviously, aware of what's going on. But, they actually sort of deal with that liaison element themselves which has been. Excellent. So the general challenges that you've had over the last three years, some of which you would have predicted and many of which you wouldn't have been able to predict, You've found that the managers services team have helped you overcome those challenges? Yeah. As I say with the knowledge that they've got of the system, they've been able to advise and sort of guide us, with that and, and help where needed, which has been, been very useful for us. Brilliant. I like that. I like to hear it. So tell me, how do things look for the future for Isle of Wight? I from a business perspective, from an SAP perspective what's the future hold? I think more savings to make unfortunately over the next few years And the impact of COVID obviously has stretched that out. We've had to change our budget plans and extend them by at least twelve months for savings. Mhmm. Mhmm. From a SAP point of view, I think we've probably reached the point where we've made as many economies on the cost of SAP as we possibly could, with the move to Remedy Street and the move to yourselves and the managed service before that. We're still reviewing our SRM. We've got a very, old SRM, version five point five, and we're still in the process of, reviewing that and what the potential replacement for that might be. I have a task over the next twelve months reviewing SAP within, Isle of Wight Council, what its future might be, if we stay with it. In what form do we stay with it? Do we look at Hannah? Mhmm. You know, do we look at staying and, extracting every last ounce out of the versions that we've got potentially, you know, maximizing the amount that we've spent on it over the last, twelve years now that we've had, had SAP in our council. Yeah. It's a bit of an unknown, to be honest. We've just renewed our contract with yourself for three years. So Yes. We'll stay at that. Though I think it's fine. It's a positive. Yes. Yeah. I mean, that was no that was a no brainer. It really was. So, you know, we were more than happy to do that. Yeah. But with SAP, does it fit? You know, with the changing, way of the world at the moment, does SAP fit, you know, in the long term? You know, maybe not in the next few years, but five years, ten years. Will it still be what we need to have? Mhmm. Part of my mind is crossroad that a lot of people have come to. You know, what is the way forward and how is the world going to look for us and with SAP. And the fact that SAP has extended that end of life for the version that you're on, I suppose that gives you a little more flexibility in time span for moving forward. Yeah. Well, it's really interesting talking to you Dean, and I thank you for the time because I know you're very busy always, but I think it's really important for our users who are attending this user group to really understand that it's not just about the project itself, it's about how things go once the dust has settled after the project. So I really appreciate your time. To everybody listening today, thank you very much. If you have any questions at all regarding your SAP migration to the cloud, whether that's to private cloud like Dean did or to one of the hyperscalers, please don't hesitate to get in touch with us. So thank you very much. Have a good day, and goodbye from us.