North Tyneside Council has successfully gone live with a new SaaS-based finance system in just 10 months – a significant milestone in its digital transformation strategy aimed at improving efficiency, reducing costs, and delivering better services for the borough’s 210,000 residents.

The ambitious implementation was achieved thanks to leading ERP provider TechnologyOne’s unique SaaS+ delivery method which accelerated the replacement of its legacy on-premise finance product.

North Tyneside will now benefit from a modern, integrated solution designed specifically for local government to reduce administrative burden by unlocking a range of forecasting, budgeting and automation capabilities.

SaaS+ enables councils to experience the benefits of new technology faster by fostering a shared commitment to on-time, on-budget delivery through a commercial model that avoids traditional upfront implementation fees - reducing the risk of time and cost blowouts associated with digital transformation.

The council is already seeing efficiency gains since go live in April through a better user interface, smoother requisition and approvals processes, improved invoice processing, an enhanced user experience in General Ledger and a vastly improved CIS returns process, all made more efficient through targeted automation.

Jon Ritchie, Director of Resources at North Tyneside Council said, "I have been extremely impressed with the support given by TechnologyOne, especially the excellent team working on our implementation.  Their consultants have worked in partnership with our in-house digital and finance team, ensuring that we hit the challenging timescales that we set ourselves.  We are already seeing the benefit of the new system, which will be enhanced further as we implement the modules scheduled to come in over the coming months”. Embracing the SaaS-enabled solution has further enhanced digital security of North Tyneside’s operations, with TechnologyOne regularly deploying platform-wide security enhancements to maintain optimal protection.

North Tyneside can also harness the expertise of TechnologyOne’s highly skilled in-house consulting team, allowing the council to redirect staff away from troubleshooting IT issues and towards delivering improved services for residents.

Ben Malpass, Executive Vice President for Local Government at TechnologyOne, said, “North Tyneside has made it clear that driving process efficiency is a top priority and these efficiency gains are in turn helping to streamline financial services that directly impact residents, we’re proud to support that vision in a meaningful way. Seeing the solution implemented and delivering value faster than is typical for digital transformation projects is a testament North Tyneside’s drive to enhance community services and we are excited to see that the strength of our Council enabled technology is enabling this focus."

TechnologyOne partners with over 50 local authorities across the United Kingdom, including Worcestershire County Council, Highland Council, Newport City Council, and Antrim & Newtown Abbey as well as the provider’s first London Borough, Islington Council.