Fujitsu is extending its partnership with Reading Borough Council, helping it to deploy an Oracle ERP Cloud (Oracle Financials Cloud) across its financial management system.

The contract will make Reading one of the first organizations to adopt Oracle Financials Cloud in the UK.

Reading Borough Council said the move highlights its commitment to high level service provisioning for its citizens.

The contract is worth £1.35m and will run over a three-year term.

Fujitsu said it will configure Oracle Financials Cloud for the council and will provide a number of additional service including BACs, cheque runs and service support.

Oracle said its Oracle Financials Cloud solution provides rich reporting to budget holders whilst reducing operating cost and offers a “more intuitive” service that enables new employees to navigate the system quicker than previous versions.

Fujitsu’s UK & Ireland business development lead Richard Shuff said the extension of its relationship with the council highlights the depth of trust and “excellent” working relationship between the two over the past decade.

Reading Borough Council’s head of finance Alan Cross said the adoption of the system will deliver “significant cost savings” in times of budgetary constraint.

“We decided to upgrade to Oracle Financials Cloud as it not only delivers us significant cost savings in these times of budgetary constraint but also provides genuine business benefit through significantly improved reporting at devolved levels, which our senior managers need,” Cross said.

“The SaaS option fits with our internal ICT strategy so we can achieve a number of benefits through our managed service with Fujitsu.”

The system is due to go-live in April 2014.