Procurement of an HR and Payroll System

What the buyer is asking for

The scope of the tender is to identify a suitable supplier for the implementation and ongoing support of a replacement HR system and managed UK payroll service for Look Ahead Care, Support & Housing. The required solution must support the full employee lifecycle, workforce administration, managed payroll and pensions administration, recruitment, onboarding, compliance, employee relations, reporting, integrations, data migration, implementation and transition to business as usual. Unless expressly identified as a separately priced option or Phase 2 requirement, Tenderers should assume that all items listed in this section form part of the core day-one scope and must be included within the tendered solution and commercial response. • Core HR and workforce administration: employee records, organisational structure, position and employee references, contracts and terms, multiple concurrent engagements per individual, establishment management and post control, including budgeted posts, position management, organisational hierarchy, approval workflows and reporting-line management. • Payroll and pensions: fully managed UK payroll service, including statutory filing, year-end activity, managed pensions administration, auto-enrolment, opt-outs, contribution submissions, provider returns, pension query support, statutory payments, salary sacrifice, attachment of earnings, off-cycle or emergency payments, payroll queries, Average Holiday Pay and NMW/NLW compliance calculations. • Absence management: sickness, annual leave, family leave, sabbaticals, AWOL, authorised absence, return-to-work processes and associated workflow, reporting and audit requirements. Fully customisable T&Cs in line with either Organisation policy or TUPE-in policy • Recruitment, onboarding, compliance and learning: recruitment and applicant tracking, candidate portal, document upload, job board integration or linking to the Look Ahead website, regulatory and safer-recruitment compliance records, dedicated DBS integration and tracking, expiry alerting, evidence capture, employee document management, retention and deletion rules, onboarding, pre-employment compliance, offboarding and leaver workflows. DBS functionality should support integration with a third-party DBS checking provider where required, including application status tracking, outcome recording, renewal monitoring, expiry reporting and audit history. • Employee, manager and workforce development: employee and manager self-service, performance and supervision recording, talent, succession and workforce development management, including talent profiles, succession planning, career development, skills and competency tracking, performance and appraisal linkage, succession risk reporting, development plans and management reporting. • Learning Pool: Learning Pool will remain in use during Phase 1. Integration with Learning Pool is core scope at HRIS go-live, while replacement of Learning Pool or the Learning Management System is a Phase 2 priced option and is not part of the day-one core replacement. • Employee relations and HR case management: case creation, categorisation, allocation, workflow, task management, document storage, confidentiality controls, restricted access, audit trail, key date tracking, outcome recording, reporting and the ability to manage multiple case types such as disciplinary, grievance, sickness absence, capability, probation and flexible working. • Reporting, governance and security: reporting, analytics, statutory reporting including Gender Pay Gap reporting, audit trails, data retention, GDPR reporting, information governance reporting, Subject Access Request and IG request support, workflow and authorisation, role-based access control, user security administration, permission management and auditable security access reporting. • Integrations and interfaces: key systems and data flows required to support HR, payroll, recruitment, compliance, learning, finance and reporting, including Unit4, Neuven bank and agency portal, identity provider, Active Directory and single sign-on, pension providers, Learning Pool, Access Group compliance portal, Cardinus, DBS checking providers or other third-party pre-employment compliance services, the Look Ahead website and reporting, data warehouse or Power BI feeds. • Data migration, implementation and transition: data migration from the incumbent iTrent system, cleansing, reconciliation, testing, training, cutover, hypercare, knowledge transfer and transition to business as usual, including system administration handover, support model definition and retained configuration documentation. • Separately priced options: Tenderers must provide separately priced options where requested in the Cost Schedule, including integrated or natively supported rostering and any Phase 2 replacement of Learning Pool or the Learning Management System. Such options are not part of the core day-one HR system and managed payroll replacement unless expressly confirmed by Look Ahead following evaluation and contract award. The list above is not exhaustive and is intended to summarise the principal areas included within the scope of the tender.

How this is scored

Published by the buyer. A winning response is written to these weightings, not to the question.

• 70%qualityQuality
• 10%qualityDemonstrationShortlisted suppliers will be invited to demonstration of product
• 10%qualitySocial Value
• 10%priceCommercial

What you must already have

Conditions of participation. These are pass or fail, so check them before writing anything.

• economic

  Legal and financial capacity must adhere to Annex 3 PSQ of the tender document providing confirmation of compliance. Financial capacity must evidence completion of contracts to similar value of the tender Preference will be given to tenderers who are a G-Cloud framework holder

• technical

  Tenderers must achieve at least 60% of the available written quality and social value score to progress. This minimum threshold will be assessed after the written quality, social value and commercial evaluations have been completed, and before any invitations to demonstrations are issued.

How contested is this?

Buyers publish how many bids they received. Across 158 comparable procurements we can tell you the typical field size, how often one of these goes uncontested, and whether the buyer awards on price or on quality.

Timeline

4 published dates · Europe/London

1. Tender notice published28 days ago

   9 Oct 2026, 11:54 BST
2. Clarification questions byin 7 days

   13 Nov 2026, 12:00 GMT
3. Submission deadlinein 14 days

   20 Nov 2026, 17:00 GMT
4. Award decision expected byin 112 days

   26 Feb 2027, 23:59 GMT

Commercial outcome and contract awards

Nothing awarded yet

Notice history

2 events · 2 releases on Find a Tender

1. Tender notice9 Oct 2026, 11:20 BST095559-2026
2. Tender updated9 Oct 2026, 11:54 BST095598-2026

Payment terms

Payment Terms - 30 days for valid undisputed invoices

Documents

• Tender notice on Find a Tender