The UK’s Post Office is searching for a new supplier to handle a sackful of back office applications support and modernization, a newly published tender doc revealed this week.
The contract covers a range of enterprise platforms, including SAP, Oracle and Service Now, as well as robotic process automation, and infrastructure and hosting on Azure.
The £65 million deal is spread across five different lots. These include providing managed support for a raft of SAP applications, including HRSAP, SAP PI, CFS, Blackline, FMI and Web3.
It is also looking for managed support across “databases and data tools used within the Post Office” on both Oracle and SQL. And if a potential partner can provide managed support for ServiceNow, well that’s on the block too.
One lot covers support for RPA, though the text mentions both BluePrism, the UK-based RPA specialist, and Blue Yonder, the UK-based supply chain management firm. [Perhaps someone needs to pitch on editing software too]. The final lot covers Azure infrastructure hosting “via other lots described in this procurement.”
That’s a wide range of technologies, and potentially suppliers - though the organization is open to a single supplier handling all of them. The work was previously handled by Accenture, though it is not known if the services giant is bidding for the latest batch of work.
One supplier that will definitely not be tendering is Fujitsu, despite having avowed competencies in all the technologies listed in the tender doc and a decades long relationship with the Post Office. The Japanese firm has previously supplied the Post Office with services on at least some of the platforms listed.
Unfortunately, that relationship is now overshadowed by the scandal hit Horizon system the firm supplied to the Post Office, and which resulted in what former PM Rishi Sunak described as one of the gravest miscarriages of justice in British history.
The Japan-based firm said in January, that until the inquiry into the Horizon scandal concludes, it would not be pitching for further UK public sector work.
Well, up to a point, at least. Those points include where it was already involved in a live procurement, or where there is an existing relationship or “agreed need” for Fujitsu’s expertise.
However, in this case, the Post Office spokesperson confirmed, "Fujitsu are not involved in these applications" adding, "Fujitsu have said publicly that they would not bid of any new public sector contracts."
The spokesperson confirmed that it hopes to award the contract in June next for an initial five years, with the potential for a two year extension, and a possible one year extension after that.
