Supply of ICT Systems/Applications/Platforms/SaaS

Description

Between June and November 2023, Curo embarked on an exercise to develop its IT/Digital strategy to underpin its 10-year vision and corporate strategic objectives. The strategy includes a five-year roadmap and high-level business case for change. During the strategy discovery phase, we undertook a desktop exercise to evaluate the social housing software vendor market to identify solution options for supporting our strategy, both addressing limitation with our existing legacy systems and to open up innovation, future-fit opportunities and better potential to meet our long-term business goals. Through this exercise we concluded that there are a number of different approaches that could be taken to updating our systems: • Option 1 – Platform with bespoke configuration for our defined requirements/specifications e.g. Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics • Option 2 – Housing Management software/product hosted on a platform. E.g. Iproperty on MS Dynamics as an example • Option 3 – Traditional housing management software similar to current approach – Aareon QL • Option 4 - best of breed approach - similar to our current environment but with different products for different requirements, integrated to provide market leading products in each business area This RFI process seeks to identify the benefits and drawbacks/risks to each of these approaches in order to help us finalise our ICT and Procurement strategy. Each of the above have pro’s and con’s, differing cost points, differing implementation timescales etc. so as we review the products, we will use high level criteria to help with an assessment scoring. This is not scoring the actual product or supplier and will not take place of a full procurement evaluation; it will be a scoring of the pro’s and con’s of the approaches so that we can start to evaluate which approach we might take and begin to build our full detailed requirements document ready for tender. To support this, we are applying a high-level evaluation framework that enables us to compare different solution approaches in a consistent way. This framework avoids detailed technical scoring and instead concentrates on the eight key strategic themes in the table below. Criteria Description 1 Strategic Fit To what extent does the solution align with our long-term business strategy, organisational goals, and digital ambitions? 2 Future Flexibility & Scalability Will this approach adapt to changing needs, regulatory changes, and scale with our growth? 3 Implementation Complexity & Risk What is the estimated implementation effort, risk of disruption, and reliance on specialist skills? 4 Integration Capability How well does the approach support integration with other systems (existing and future)? 5 Total Cost Consideration (TCO) High-level estimation of total cost of ownership (including licensing, implementation, support). 6 Vendor Ecosystem & Support Model Maturity of the vendor or platform ecosystem, support availability, and market presence. 7 User Experience & Adoption Likely ease of use for staff, training burden, and ability to drive adoption. 8 Innovation Potential How well does the approach support innovation, emerging technologies (e.g., automation, AI), and continuous improvement?