Improving our HR, Finance and Procurement systems and services 

During the past two months, 237 staff from across the university have taken part in 39 requirements gathering workshops to highlight improvements they would like to see in our HR, Finance and Procurement systems and services.  

The Digital Core project is expected to bring a standardised way of working which will enable improvements to the way in which staff engage with HR, Finance and Procurement services through new underlying IT systems. Core HR, Finance and Procurement processes such as booking annual leave, booking training courses, claiming expenses, making purchases, undertaking recruitment, payroll and reviewing our reporting capability will all be in-scope.  

The workshops allowed staff to focus on opportunities that the new IT systems will bring, pain points that are currently being experienced, systems functionality they would like to see and improving user experience and processes. 

HR, Finance and Procurement colleagues highlighted how they would like new systems to support them in their roles in delivering services across the university. Many colleagues from Faculties and other Departments also took part in workshops to provide an insight into how they would like the systems to work as users of these services.  

Carolyn Stanhope, Head of HR Specialist Services, said: “We would like to thank all staff that took part in the workshops and various interviews. Over 1,100 requirements for the new solution have been developed. These have now been checked, reviewed and agreed by nominated evaluation criteria leads and have formed a resulting statement of requirements document which will be used as a key part of the procurement process.”  

The formal procurement process commenced in January when a Contract Notice was issued that allowed potential suppliers to register their interest in providing the university with new HR, Finance and Procurement systems. The statement of requirements will now be issued to qualifying potential suppliers to enable an initial dialogue to commence in May/June. The project team are committed to working collaboratively and will be assisted by nominated university stakeholders as they assess the eligibility of potential suppliers.  

“It is important that we identify HR, Finance and Procurement systems that bring best-practice processes to the university, rather than develop bespoke solutions,” highlights Carolyn.    

“Today we use approximately 40 different systems across our core HR, Finance and Procurement processes and we know there are many local as well as central duplicate processes in place. We need to enable standardisation and ensure new systems will meet the future needs of the university.  

“The end solution must be user-friendly and intuitive, better integrated and able to be updated and upgraded as required to keep it secure against new online threats.” 

The project team look forward to providing you with further opportunities to get involved with this project over the coming months. You can visit the sharepoint site for further information or please email digitalcore@nottingham.ac.uk if you have any questions.