Australian Crime Commission (ACC) officials have invited vendors to argue the benefits of in-house versus outsourced ERP after the federal government agency went to tender for such a system.
The agency is looking for an ERP system following rapid growth in recent years and needs to better manage human resources, finance and works management.
In its tender, the ACC said it was open to considering either an in-house ERP capability, where the systems and infrastructure were housed within the ACC, or an outsourced provider model, with the ACC as a consumer of the ERP capability.
"The ACC will consider tender responses based on either model, or a combination of either model, using a cost/benefit analysis approach," the agency said in tender documents.
An in-house offering would have to provide development, test, training and production environments, according to the tender.
An outsourced offering would only have to provide training and test environments. However, the ACC has placed restrictions on potential outsource providers. Any outsourced model would not be allowed to transfer ACC data outside Australia. ACC staff would also have to be able to perform system administrative tasks within the ACC.
Regardless of whether it was in-house or outsourced, key requirements of the ERP system were: flexible reporting, user self-service, resource and asset management, payroll processing, business intelligence and workflow.
Other necessities included reporting and analysis features that support evaluation, performance monitoring, exception reporting and reliable management.
Multiple users should also be able to access the system concurrently, said the ACC.
The agency will run the successful solution on its infrastructure consisting of Windows XP Professional and Microsoft Office 2003 on the desktop, as well as Oracle's V10G database and Solaris 10.
An industry briefing on the request for tender is proposed for 23 October.
The contract is scheduled to begin on 15 January, 2007.
