two remaining days until the tendering phase was underway. Dartmoor was always a favourite area, and I made a note to have a look later on this evening. Tanya, Pete and I had looked at the offer numbers, and we hadn’t been too impressed. The point about buying smaller consultancies is that you are effectively buying the people; without those, you have very little useful assets, and even the client list could well evaporate quickly. Put bluntly, in exchange for some cash and probably a lot more guaranteed work, we would have another boss, which in effect none of the three of us actually wanted. Things were working out well right now, and we’d developed something of a reputation, so it would be a shame not to see how far we could go. So, our response had been a polite ‘thanks, but no’. And we were unanimous on that.
The Swindon food company project had really taken off in scope, as I was talking to the various business unit heads about their specific problems. It’s sometimes hard to visualise the amount of time wasted in workarounds caused by legacy software, outdated processes, and systems that didn’t communicate. After a few days in discussions with the HR and payroll people from each unit, together with operational managers, I’d hashed out a broad plan of action and a long- ish list of providers who could meet the case and had presented it to the Steering Group. This was readily accepted. HR and payroll were working out some commissioning a draft tender document for vendors to be invited to the party. The timetable for demos had been pencilled in for the third week of May scenarios to be used in demonstrations, and the Group were
and would be finalised for inclusion with the tender, to give interested vendors plenty of time to get their act together. On my recommendation, the Steering Group was checking out all contractual obligations with the current providers, so as not to get caught with unexpected penalties. Two of the current providers were on the longlist for invitation, but the others would not be a proposition for the combined requirement, mainly on the grounds of age and functionality rather than scale. The Swindon operation was closing for an Easter break from the 3rd to the 8th April, so nothing was happening over that period. I’d passed on any other project work until the decision on which software to select was made. I got to thinking; if I had a long weekend in the West Country, I could head from there to Swindon in time for the re-opening and finish up the programmed
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ISSUE 22 GLOBAL PAYROLL MAGAZINE
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