Human Resources (HR), Payroll, Finance, Recruitment, Learning Development and Procurement CAF409-23Systems – Soft Market Testing

Contracting authority

Cafcass (Children and Family Courts Advisory and Support Service)

Scope of procurement

Title

Human Resources (HR), Payroll, Finance, Recruitment, Learning Development and Procurement Systems – Soft Market Testing

Description of procurement

Our organisation

The Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service (Cafcass) was established on 1st April 2001 as part of the government commitment to supporting children and families. It brought together the services previously provided by the Family Court Welfare Service, the Guardian ad Litem services, and the Children’s division of the Official Solicitor’s Office. Cafcass is sponsored by the Ministry of Justice and is a non-departmental public body.

Cafcass is independent of the courts, social services, education and health and work across England. Our workforce operates flexibility from any of our 30+ bases across England, and benefit from remote working. Cafcass are one of the largest employers of social workers in England and currently employ around 2300 staff.

Our remit

Cafcass operate within the law set by Parliament (Criminal Justice and Court Services Act, 2000) and under the rules and directions of the family courts. Their role is to safeguard and promote the welfare of children going through the family justice system by understanding their experiences and speaking up for them when the family court makes critical decisions about their futures.

Family Court Advisors may be asked by the courts to work with children and families then advise the court on what we consider to be in the best interests of children in 3 main areas:

• divorce and separation, sometimes called ‘private law,’ where parents or carers are unable to agree on arrangements for their children;
• care proceedings, sometimes called ‘public law’ where children’s services have serious concerns about the safety or welfare of a child; and
• adoption, which can be either private or public law.

Our requirement

Cafcass is interested in further enhancing its operations, and as part of this work is focussing on key improvements in the following areas:

• HR
• Payroll
• Recruitment and onboarding
• Planning and budgeting
• Financial management
• Accounts payable
• Fixed assets management
• Learning, development and talent management
• Procurement and contract management
• Analytics relating to the above areas

Currently, Cafcass uses a mix of best of bread systems to provide the above functionality, merging data sets where possible to meet business intelligence and system integration needs. The following cloud-hosted SaaS systems are currently in operation at Cafcass:

• MHR iTrent
• Tableau
• VMS Bridge
• Advanced (Cloud Financials, Collaborative Planning, Making Tax Digital)
• Proactis Procontract
• Networx Recruitment
• Learning Nexus
• Adapt
• Experian
• Experian Rio
• PowerBI
• Business Objects
• Microsoft Forms
• Microsoft PowerApps
• Microsoft Power Automate

Contracts for several of the above solutions are approaching end of life and therefore Cafcass are taking this opportunity to understand current market opportunities. The purpose of this soft market test is to gain intelligence on the supply market for our system needs, including timescales and indicative budget.

The challenges we are currently facing include:

• Inefficiencies moving data in and out of systems.
• Lack of self-service financial management.
• Multiple providers/contracts to manage and solutions to integrate.
• Ongoing challenges to resources available to run our business areas.
• Excessive onboarding time for new staff.
• Process inefficiencies for staff using multiple systems and user interfaces.

We are interested in understanding options for a partner to provide a fully integrated cloud-based enterprise solution covering the above business areas. Cafcass will be interested at looking at possible options surrounding Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or integrated best of breed solutions.

This notice is for prior information only and is intended as pre-market engagement. We intend to hold a supplier presentation in March 2024 via Teams. Suppliers wishing to participate should register by responding via the Pro Contract system by the 29th of February. Following this session, interested parties will be invited to provide a pre-market demonstration to highlight the capabilities of their solution.