Capgemini’s t-Police Enables Three UK Police Forces to Channelize Savings From Support Services Transformation to the Frontline

Police organizations facing budgetary cuts and demands for improved efficiency are now considering how to collaborate and share services across organizational boundaries. The UK’s Cheshire Constabulary and Northamptonshire Police chose to implement a shared service that would deliver accounts, purchasing, HR, and payroll services across the two forces. In partnership with Capgemini, the two forces chose to set up a Multi-Force Shared Service (MFSS) center, using world-class, proven technology and processes. To meet this goal, the two forces decided to deploy a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution that would replace multiple disparate systems across both organizations.

The Solution

Cheshire Constabulary and Northamptonshire Police selected the t-Police Support solution from Capgemini as the integrated back office system for the MFSS. By taking advantage of Oracle’s E-business Suite, t-Police Support brings together ERP and duty management functionality in one solution to deliver administrative efficiency and can generate significant cost savings of up to 40%. t-Police Support is one part of Capgemini’s innovative t-Police IT backbone built on Oracle technology and is the first solution to provide combined front- and back-office components. The tremendous success of the MFSS has helped us welcome the Nottinghamshire Constabulary onboard, who are already realizing the benefits that the MFSS and t-Police Support can provide.

The Result

The Cheshire and Northamptonshire Constabularies worked with Capgemini to design, develop, and implement the t-Police Support solution, specifically for the MFSS, in just eight months. From running at least 11 systems feeding the different HR, accounts, purchasing, and payroll processes, the integrated MFSS now works from a single system, which is now picking up pace in the UK police sector—as demonstrated by the recent onboarding of the Nottinghamshire Constabulary. Officers and staff can now self-enrol for internal training courses. This has reduced the amount of manual updates undertaken by the Learning and Development (L&D) team. L&D previously worked with emails and spreadsheets to draw up class listings, contact trainers, send out joining instructions, and update skills information. Now, end users can update their own information on the system; L&D easily maintains this information in a centrally accessible location. Additionally, by providing transparency on the number and nature of queries received by MFSS, the team can analyze demand and deploy resources to ensure it has the right people in the right place, at the right time. Besides supporting accounts, purchasing, HR, and payroll, the solution also supports estates and logistics, which remain the responsibility of the three forces. Sarah Copley-Hirst, Head of MFSS, says: “It used to be challenging for us to reconcile the different data held by diverse teams on spreadsheets across the three forces. Now, we have a single version of that data, which means that less time is spent reconciling it, and now, people can make the right decisions much quicker.” Capgemini continues to support the t-Police system and is looking at improving functionalities. This is in line with the mandate of the MFSS, which is to deliver continuous improvement and reduce the cost of the service, while improving quality. Capgemini worked with the MFSS to develop an implementation plan, which can be replicated across other police forces as well.

How the Police Forces and Capgemini Work Together

Capgemini’s t-Police Support solution has been a cornerstone in Cheshire and Northamptonshire’s development of the first police-to-police shared service center in the UK to deal with back office support. The MFSS implementation program benefited from the expertise that each party could bring to discussions with the Deputy Chief Constables of the three forces acting as the senior responsible officers on the program and with Capgemini also having a place on the program board. The police forces were fully engaged during solution development to ensure that all required functionalities and processes would be supported. Training material was provided by the MFSS team even before the actual implementation so as to familiarize users with the new system. The team also delivered a communication program that ensured the go-live was relatively straightforward for everyone involved. This communication was vital for a change of such scale and helped encourage users to engage with new functionalities, such as self-service. t-Police leverages the shared services functionality offered in Oracle E-Business Suite R12 to enable a pre-designed shared services operating model. This model uses standardized processes and policies that are deployed using pre-designed templates aligned to leading practice benchmarks. Shared services, coupled with an Oracle E-Business Suite strategy, can dramatically increase an organization’s competitive advantage, by driving cost savings, improving quality of service, and increasing information quality. As an Oracle Diamond-level partner, Capgemini has delivered more than 5,000 Oracle solutions across industry sectors, leveraging the in-house expertise of more than 13,000 Oracle technologists spread across the world.