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What is in scope of the Great Service Programme? What systems will be affected?

Core ICIS systems dealing with Finance, Procurement, Expenses, HR, Payroll and Post Award Research are all within scope. Some additional systems such as recruitment and absence management will also be brought into Oracle Fusion Cloud.

Systems within scope of the programme include: ICIS, Talentlink, Teamseer, FreshService and My Imperial Payslips.

Systems outside of the direct scope of the Great Service Programme include: Banner, i360, and Worktribe. However, detailed design work will be carried out to ensure effective integrations between Oracle Fusion Cloud and these other systems.

What processes are being redesigned?

We are looking at redesigning or optimising all key processes, including:

  • Procure to Pay
  • Research (Post Award)
  • Order-To-Cash/Cash Management
  • Record to Report
  • Human Resources
  • Payroll 
What IT systems will be replaced, removed or decommissioned and replaced by Oracle Fusion?

The main system being replaced is ICIS, however some smaller peripheral applications like TeamSeer and TalentLink will also be replaced.

Other applications like Banner, Worktribe and Kinetics will not be replaced and will remain as they are.

When is the new system going live?

The target is that the new system is ready to go live from August 2026. Operationally, the Great Service Programme remains on track to deliver on its target go live date. However, following feedback from our community and to ensure the launch best maintains business continuity across Imperial, we are moving the go live period to November 2026.

You can view the stages of the Great Service Programme that lead up to this date on our timeline.

I’ve heard there is a Phase 1 and a Phase 2 – what is each Phase?

Phase 1 will bring all the essential functionality for Human Capital Management, Payroll, Projects, Grants and Finance including reporting, budgeting and forecasting. 

Phase 2 is for additional modules that are not currently managed in ICIS being incorporated such as Talent Management and Risk Management. 

Will I still be able to use ICIS after the new system launches?

No, following the switch over to the new system in August 2026, ICIS will no longer be available. Data currently held in ICIS will be migrated to Oracle Fusion Cloud where relevant or will be made accessible in archive format if not.

How are the needs of departments being identified and met?

We have a lot of needs to balance from across the University. The new system needs to work holistically and we are working on understanding pain points and functional requirements from multiple sources.

To understand local needs, we have seconded people into the Great Service team from a range of different departments so that they can represent the needs of their areas. During the discovery phase, we contacted all department Directors of Operations to determine who wants to be involved and ensure good representation.

Our team are dedicated to getting this right and we want your feedback on anything that has been missed.

How are you going to engage with departments, collect feedback and address requirements brought forward?

Every requirement, pain point, feedback and action that we have identified through workshops and surveys is logged on Jira, our Project Management tool.

During Application Walkthrough we have been capturing comments and feedback and to share that information back to the group.

It is important to understand that not everyone will get everything they want from the new system but we will communicate that clearly and openly with you. 

If the new system can't do everything, what is the prioritisation process for requirements and decisions on what the system can do?

We have contractual requirements and pain points that we need to address. Beyond that, we will balance the views of our Process Outcome Designers and Subject Matter Experts with what we can do from system perspective. Any compromises that need to be made will go through the Business Design Authority for approval. 

Given our mixed success at implementing change at Imperial, what lessons have we learnt from our own recent change programmes?

We want to build on lessons learnt from work that pre-dates this project and the new expertise brought into the team for this programme. Key lessons learnt that are being built on for this work include:

  1. Appropriate timescales – The Great Service Programme has already spent multiple years in requirement gathering and process mapping, and now has 18 months to carry out detailed design, user acceptance and system testing, ensuring that design and implementation will not be rushed and will be fit for purpose
  2. Appropriate resourcing and user representation – The Great Service Programme has a large team including experienced staff from across the university’s academic and support services teams, who are dedicated full time to the project to ensure that user needs are front and centre in system design.
  3. Appropriate operational readiness criteria for ‘go-live’ decision – Reliable functioning of the processes within scope of the Great Service Programme are absolutely essential to Imperial, its staff, and students. As such, we will move forward with the system's launch only once it has been rigorously validated for full operational readiness.
Has the Great Service Programme team been looking at the examples of challenging Oracle rollouts at other universities to take forward lessons learnt?

Yes, we have proactively engaged with other organisations that are at different stages of the Oracle Fusion Cloud implementation, including Edinburgh University, and will continue to do so throughout our implementation.  We attended an event at Edinburgh University, where we were able to engage with members of their programme team to understand the specific challenges they faced. We have taken several key learnings from these discussions and associated research that are being used to inform how we now work across the programme and deliver the system at Imperial. We also developed contacts at these organisations so that we can continue to engage with them as required throughout the programme.

How do I find out more about the Great Service Programme?

Do come back to our webpages that will be added to as the programme progresses for the latest information. Members of the team will also be presenting at the Professional Service events over the coming year, as well as other more local network and staff events to keep the community informed. The Great Service Sharepoint site has more detailed content and training for staff to access.

Should you have any queries do contact us or visit our contact pages to find a relevant team member to approach.

It looks like departments will only know about new processes shortly before go live? Will there be enhanced HR support during this period?

Process design has begun in earnest from January 2025.  We will be actively engaging with faculties and departments throughout this time via our Departmental Process Outcomes Designers and also our Change team.  This will include Faculty Operating Officers and key leadership such as Departmental Operations Managers or Research Managers.  Prototypes have been demonstrated from May 2025 and end users (including HR) will be actively engaged in testing from Jan 2026. This aims to give departments time to work out how best to deploy their existing staff to align with new processes. Bespoke training will be provided to different user groups shortly before go-live to ensure training is fresh for users. Additional Change Managers have been recruited to provide support for this work.

View our timeline or get in touch for more detail.