To agree a direct award for licences for the Abacus e-solutions software system for a period of three years from 1 February 2018.

That:

Servelec HSC be directly awarded a contract for the provision of the existing Abacus e-solutions software licences for a period of three years from 1 February 2018 at a maximum cost of £45K.

1.         Discontinue using the Abacus e-solutions system and raise service user charges manually through the council’s main financial system, Business World. This is not recommended as this would require additional staff resources of at least two full-time employees to manually calculate charges based on services provided, and to manually raise service orders in Business World for each four weekly billing period. This would be more costly than the licence renewal and inefficient, resulting in data having to be re-keyed into two systems.

2.         Discontinue using the Abacus e-solutions software and use the financial assessment functionality within the existing Mosaic case management system, utilising calculations in forms. This is not recommended as this is not an option available within the timescales. This option would require significant investment in staff time to develop the functionality within Mosaic to comply with the council’s current charging policy, implementation and training, and is not practical, affordable or achievable within the timescale.

3.         Extend the contract for one year. This is not recommended due to aligning the Abacus and Mosaic licence end dates. The market is limited and the risk of another provider not being able to deliver, due to the complexities of the co-dependencies within two existing systems, within a mobilisation timescale are high.

4.         Procure a new provider. This is not recommended. The timeframes available do not allow the council to go through a full procurement process, and the system licence needs to be in place to maintain business as usual, to remain compliant with the Care Act.