Recognizing the importance—and complexity—of this effort, the government decided to enlist the help of a services partner and hired Accenture. Accenture was selected from an open market tender by a government panel, successfully meeting government evaluation criteria such as: demonstrated capability and experience working with large decentralized organizations (including specific experience with Queensland Government agencies); understanding of and experience with large-scale, contemporary packaged HR/payroll solutions; and suitable key team members with the experience, qualifications and skills to perform the required project tasks.
Accenture's initial role was to develop detailed business requirements for new HR systems that would support Queensland's complete "hire-to-retire" HR processes—that is, processes that would provide complete HR support from recruitment through to the end of employment. To do this, the Accenture team worked closely with five separate agencies during a three-month period to draft detailed business requirements for the new system. Accenture subsequently undertook an extensive consultation process with all 28 agencies to validate and gather additional requirements unique to each agency. These requirements were then synthesized to create an exhaustive list of requirements, each of which was prioritized as mandatory, highly desirable or desirable.
Once the detailed requirements of the new system were finalized, the Queensland Government solicited bids from a short list of technology vendors. From those proposals, the government selected a bundle of applications including SAP, Workbrain, RecruitASP and Saba. This group of applications provided the complete functionality that Queensland needed, from recruitment to hiring, payroll and training. The new system also provided rostering capabilities for those organizations that require irregular hours from their staff—including hospitals, police, correctional facilities and emergency services providers.
Once it had selected this suite of products, the government engaged Accenture to undertake the implementation planning phase of the project. This phase entailed the creation of a conceptual design of the technical, functional and human elements of the solution; a detailed project plan for the solution design phase; and a road map to be followed during the subsequent implementation phase.
Accenture was also selected as the Government's partner for this implementation phase, including solution design, build, test and rollout. The pilot implementation for HR functionality was rolled out to the first agency in March 2007, with subsequent implementations set to be deployed over the next two years.