The cost of ERP modernisation efforts at the Bank of England is creeping up: the central bank this week amended a contract with partner Version 1 – pushing implementation costs from an initial £8.7 million to £21.5 million.
The contract was amended without any further competitive tender – the Bank of England cited the need for additional works by the contractor and “inconvenience or duplication of cost preventing a change of contractor.”
BoE's ERP migration: A bite at a time?
It’s the second contract amendment, amid changes to both scope and implementation methodology, a brace of contract notices reveals.
The modification notice on January 6 bumps costs up £7.6 million. A contract amendment in February 2025 increased costs £5.1 million.
The Bank of England attributed most (£4.1 million) of that latter cost increase with Version 1 to changing “the implementation methodology.’
A “multi-phase” approach
It opted to move from a “two phase approach, to a multiple phase approach with Oracle Modules going live based on the Bank's priorities…”
The central bank also added Oracle Accounting Hub and Oracle Cloud Payroll migrations to the scope of the ERP modernisation work.
The BoE describes its contract with Version 1 as for “a strategic integration partner to support the implementation of technical and change management aspects of the Oracle Cloud implementation and business change programme” without specifying what that implementation is.
The latest contract will end in August 2029.
That's within the terms of the original 55-month contract signed in 2023, and its optional 24-month extension, which the bank is now using.
CIO: “Any ERP is a difficult thing”
Speaking to The Stack in 2025, Bank of England CIO Nathan Monk said the bank was adopting a hybrid “cloud-smart” strategy as it modernised its tech stack, adding “we're trying to make sure we're selecting the right hosting environment for the right application.”
Discussing the modernisation of the bank’s ERP systems, he said: “Any ERP is the difficult thing; it goes right at the heart of everything organizations do…
“So it's making progress, but it’s challenging, like any ERP is.”
The bank uses both Oracle and SAP for different operational functions.
The BoE is currently also recruiting a “skilled and experienced Oracle ERP Procurement Configuration and Implementation Specialist to play a pivotal role in deploying and optimising our new ERP solution… configuring, implementing, and supporting Oracle ERP procurement modules.
“This includes,” the job description shows, “Sourcing, Purchasing, Contracts, Supplier Management, eCatalogues, and Reporting,” software.
That’s one of the many open technology roles at the central bank, which is also looking for a “Head of Data Strategy and Implementation…”
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