UK Finance Watchdog Spends Millions 'enhancing' Workday Software Rolled Out 4 Years Ago

The UK's financial regulator is signing a deal worth up to £12.3 million ($15.9 million) with tech services biz Cognizant to make "enhancements" to a Workday HR and finance system it implemented several years ago.

According to a recent contract award notice, the Financial Conduct Authority said it hired the systems integrator "in order to support the delivery of enhancements required by the business," in a project set to last five years.

The FCA signed up Workday in April 2020, under a £11.4 million ($14.8 million) agreement with the vendor that was scheduled to last until December 2024. It hired the US SaaS business application vendor to replace "existing HR, finance and procurement systems with a cloud based enterprise resource planning solution."

"The FCA are looking to exit its current Data Centre contract in 2021 and as such need all of its Finance and procurement system migrated by 31 March 2021," it said at the time.

As per its financial report for 2021-22 [PDF], the FCA said the new Workday system was introduced for both the FCA and the Payment Systems Regulator (PSR) in April 2021, and was replacing the old Oracle/Chrysalis system. It also attributed £11.3 million ($14.7 million) in software development costs to the project.

The FCA's financial report for 2022-23 [PDF] said Workday was "highly integrated with SaaS arrangements, including Sharepoint, Salesforce and Workday." It went on to say it spent £4.8 million ($6.2 million) on software development relating to Workday.

In its most recent report for 2023-24 [PDF], the FCA showed it continued to spend money customizing and integrating the Workday software it had introduced two years earlier, spending £3.8 million ($4.9 million) in the process.

The Register has asked FCA to comment.

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Earlier this year, the FCA received a damning verdict on its technology-enabled transformation program. A report from an All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) of MPs said that among stakeholders there was "near unanimity that the FCA's claimed transformation has been ineffective, with cynicism from many respondents about whether it was ever intended to achieve genuine change."

In response, an FCA spokesperson said: "We sympathize with those who have lost out as a result of wrongdoing in financial services. However, we strongly reject the characterization of the organization. We have learned from historic issues and transformed as an organization so we can deliver for consumers, the market and the wider economy." ®