News
McKesson opens service centre in Wales for NHS payroll and HR system
4 July 2008
McKesson Corp is opening a shared service centre in Bangor, Wales to
support the integrated payroll and human resources system for the NHS.
The investment, which will create 300 jobs over the next three years,
has been supported with grant aid from the Welsh Assembly Government.
A consortium led by McKesson, which includes Oracle Corp and IBM,
is supplying the NHS with the system, called the Electronic Staff Record
(ESR), under a contract worth £240 million.
The ESR was designed to transform the way the NHS delivers
both human resources (HR) and payroll services to its employees. The
system will create cost efficiencies and service improvement and enable
the NHS to have a clear view of its workforce, identify any skills
shortages or gaps and provide payroll information, appraisal and
training provision.
The pay structures, HR processes, government directives and
ever-changing agendas made it one of the most complex, single IT
implementations on record. The core system is now fully rolled out and
serves 7% of the working population in England and Wales.
More than 1.2 million workers in England and Wales are now paid
through the system, which has replaced 28 existing core payroll systems,
67 HR systems and 1702 in-house trust-specific systems.
The Bangor location will be the company’s largest centre in the UK
outside its Warwick headquarters. The office on Parc Menai will now
become a key centre of operations for McKesson Shared Services. It will
manage the day-to-day running of the ESR system on behalf of NHS trusts
who opt to outsource their HR and payroll transactional activity. An
additional centre is also established in Glasgow.
Their Bangor office, which is owned by the Assembly Government, has
the capacity to accommodate up to 120 employees. The company says
discussions will take place regarding the procurement of additional
offices to accommodate the planned expansion.
Geraint Jones, chief executive of International Business Wales, the
economic development arm of the Welsh Assembly Government (WAG), said,
“The new Bangor facility will create excellent job opportunities and has
been actively supported by WAG.”
Charmaine McDonald, Managing Director of McKesson UK, said: “I am
excited at the prospect of developing our shared services facility in
Wales. Like the NHS, McKesson’s greatest asset is its people and the
thought that we can add more talented people to our team in Bangor is
incredibly encouraging. I consider this business unit a core element of
our future success in the UK.”
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