Maximising ORR’s Oracle Cloud ERP and HCM Investment with an ASPIRE Next-Generation Managed Service for SaaS

The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) is the independent safety and economic regulator for Britain’s railways and monitor of National Highways.

ORR is responsible for ensuring that railway operators comply with health and safety law. It regulates Network Rail’s activities and funding requirements, manages access to the railway network, licenses the operators of railway assets and publishes rail statistics. ORR is also the competition authority for the railways and enforces consumer protection law in relation to the railway. As highways monitor, ORR is responsible for monitoring National Highways’ management of the strategic road network, the motorways, and main ‘A’ roads in England.

Through the G-Cloud 12 procurement framework, The Office of Rail and Road (ORR) selected Version 1 as its Oracle Cloud ERP and HCM Managed Service provider in November of 2021. Version 1 was the obvious choice for ORR, being an established Oracle Modern OPN Partner with a 25+ year Oracle heritage, and the largest Oracle practice in the UK and Ireland.

Implementing Oracle Cloud ERP and HCM

Previous to engaging with Version 1, ORR had made the strategic decision to implement Oracle Cloud ERP and HCM to create a single view of corporate information across ORR, and to deliver an enhanced employee user experience. With Oracle Cloud ERP and HCM, Finance and HR leaders no longer need to struggle to share information from disparate systems, and it offers a unified solution for Finance and HR teams that provides insights into how change impacts budgets, forecasts, talent, resource allocation, and more.

Prior to going live with its new Oracle Cloud ERP and HCM solution, ORR had worked with another System Implementor (SI) who had deployed the solution live. However, ORR needed an experienced partner to guide their transition to BAU and provide expert advice on how to optimise their solution to take advantage of what the latest releases have to offer. ORR utilised the G-Cloud 12 Framework to locate a new partner to take over the service.

With a 25+ year Oracle heritage, the largest UKI Oracle onshore practice, 450+ specialist ERP Consultants and unrivalled expertise across the entire stack, Version 1 was the natural choice to illuminate the way forward for ORR on their Oracle Cloud ERP and HCM journey.

Solution

Version 1 offers a Next-Generation Managed Service model that has been designed specifically for Oracle SaaS – which we call ASPIRE. ASPIRE is a suite of service offerings, covering the full breadth of Oracle SaaS Managed Service requirements, that we tailor to each customers exact requirements. ASPIRE is highly flexible not only in terms of the breadth of services we can offer but also the commercial models we apply.

Utilising this highly flexible managed service model, it was also easy to integrate ORR’s other key requirement of having a partner with extensive expertise assist them with the ongoing expansion of the Oracle modular footprint to deploy functionality included in their subscription that hadn’t been included in the original go-live.

Essentially Version 1 will continue to support ORR in leveraging their full subscription, not only maximising the return on investment for ORR but also opening up new opportunities for innovation and improvements throughout the contract. Additionally, ORR sought to maximise the value delivered by the organisation’s internal Subject Matter Experts while having a flexible, supportive partner to help resolve any queries and assist throughout the journey in critical times such as the release regression testing process.

Version 1 has an automated testing solution that has been designed specifically for Oracle SaaS to ensure that ORR’s SMEs would be able to focus on what really matters (applying their business knowledge to deliver value for ORR) rather than admin/regression testing. Version 1’s ASPIRE Automated Testing is unique for Version 1, based on our investment in an Oracle SaaS-specific testing tool.

Outcomes

Cutting Costs and Queries with a Timely, Low-Risk Transition
It was critical to ORR that Version 1 could deliver a low-risk transition from the incumbent SI against a very tight timescale. Utilising tried and tested specialist transition methodologies, Version 1 successfully, safely, and smoothly transitioned the solution from the incumbent supplier in two weeks, cutting costs immediately for ORR.

Version 1 then moved on to supporting ORR employees with transitioning the Oracle Cloud ERP and HCM solution into BAU operations across the HR and Finance departments. This involved the delivery of training and ongoing support to ORR Finance and HR SMEs as they settled into utilising the solution. Version 1’s testing support and automated testing solution looked after the regression testing that would have previously taken these SMEs away from focusing on adopting new features and familiarising themselves with the solution for BAU operations.

Version 1’s Oracle experts supported ORR to rapidly reduce the number of open queries and service requests following go live. Open queries were reduced by 50% within two weeks.

While the inherent service SLA gave ORR the confidence that any queries would be resolved against agreed SLA terms, Version 1’s flexible ASPIRE Managed Service approach delivered additional packages of valuable work such as the implementation of changes to Annual Leave calculations, alongside reviewing and reconfiguring Procurement approval rules to streamline the process.

Continuous Optimisation

New integrations, such as connecting to ORR’s LMS and Recruitment applications, are being deployed based on industry best practices to introduce further efficiencies within ORR and deliver better access to data. New reports have been produced around absences and organisation structure to support ORR’s employees and the HR team to monitor leave and organisational changes. Version 1 are currently helping ORR to implement Single Sign On across all their Pods to improve security and streamline access.

Version 1 support; ERP Cloud – Financials, SCM Cloud – Procurement, SCM Cloud – Supply Chain Planning, HCM Cloud – Human Resources Core, HCM Cloud – Talent Management, HCM Cloud – Workforce Management, Oracle Cloud Platform Integration, Oracle Cloud Platform Application Development.