Corporate report

Enterprise Customer Relationship Management Programme (ECRM): Accounting Officer Assessment summary

Published 30 October 2026

It is normal practice for Accounting Officers to scrutinise significant policy proposals or plans to start or vary major projects and assess whether they measure up to the standards set out in Managing Public Money guidelines. From April 2017, the government has committed to make a summary of the key points from these assessments available to Parliament when an accounting officer has agreed an assessment of projects within the Government’s Major Projects Portfolio (GMPP).

I have made this initial assessment of the Enterprise Customer Relationship Management (ECRM) programme following approval of its business case internally in March 2026 and by HM Treasury (HMT) in April 2026. The Programme joined the Government’s Major Projects Portfolio (GMPP) in 2025, and under the Project Reset changes, the National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority (NISTA) have confirmed that the programme will remain on GMPP from 1 April 2026. The early stage of the programme to procure a long-term, direct and flexible relationship with a software supplier completed during Quarter 2 of this year. I expect to update this assessment as the programme matures, in tandem with updates to the programme business case and as further significant spend approvals are granted. This assessment relates to expenditure of up to £272.6 million through to December 2027 for procurement, mobilisation, establishment of the core ECRM platform and delivery of the first four approved use cases. Future deployment across HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) remains subject to separate approval decisions.

Background and context

HMRC has one of the largest customer service functions in the UK, servicing over 35 million citizens and 5 million businesses. The UK government’s vision (set out in HMRC’s Transformation Roadmap) is to transform customer management making it simpler for customers to pay taxes, claim benefits, and for HMRC to deliver efficient, modern, data-driven services. The ECRM Programme is an HMRC initiative to modernise and provide an enterprise-wide Customer Relationship Management (CRM) capability across the department. It will deliver a secure, scalable, and intelligent Software as a Service (SaaS) CRM platform that replaces fragmented legacy systems. The programme is critical to delivering our Spending Review outcomes and supports HMRC’s ambition to provide more personalised, efficient, and data-driven services to individuals and businesses, directly supporting HMRC’s strategic objective of achieving 90% digital customer interactions by 2030.

The Programme aims to create a generational shift in the way HMRC supports its customers — critical to delivering HMRC’s priorities of improving day-to-day performance, closing the tax gap, and reform and modernisation. Currently, HMRC manages its customer interactions, processes, customer information and business insights in a siloed, disconnected way. By replacing fragmented, legacy systems with a unified platform, HMRC will deliver a more personalised, efficient, and secure service, across all Tax Regimes. This will improve the customer experience by allowing the customer to have a single full view of their tax obligations, reducing the need for customers to repeat information and increasing satisfaction across all channels — improving service delivery, enhancing compliance, and reducing operational costs. HMRC will better understand customer behaviour and needs through advanced analytics providing the breadth and depth of data needed to support compliance activity — by being more proactive and pre-emptive, through targeted communications including prompts and nudges, proactive compliance interventions, and improved policy and resource planning.

Regularity

No regulatory changes are required to enact this programme. The legislative basis for HMRC to carry out this activity is provided under Section 9 of the Commissioners for Revenue and Custom Act 2005 which allows the Commissioners to do anything they think conducive (or necessary, expedient, or incidental) to the exercise of their functions in particular here, their general collection and management (C&M) functions to manage and administer the tax system.

The exercise of those powers is subject to normal considerations of good decision-making, particularly that the decision be reasonable and proportionate and taking into account all relevant considerations. HMRC has appropriate powers to implement the ECRM programme and consequently the expenditure is regarded as regular; therefore, there are no regulatory concerns preventing the Accounting Officer from proceeding.

The programme will be delivered within existing powers and legislation, ensuring that effective controls are in place to protect government, HMRC and customer data, including compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other regulations that govern data within HMRC.

Propriety

The programme adheres to HMT and HMRC’s Change Lifecycle governance and procurement standards, which are applied throughout. The programme also complies with Cabinet Office (CO) and Government Digital Service (GDS) controls for IT and procurement. The programme business case was approved internally at HMRC’s Change Investment and Design Committee in March 2026 and approved by HMT, CO and GDS in April 2026.

The ECRM Programme operates within the governance framework of the Customer Management Cluster (CMC), which is a strategic group established to modernise and unify how HMRC manages customer interactions. The CMC brings together several interdependent initiatives — including the ECRM Programme, Contact Centre as a Service (CCaaS), and Registration and Record Management (R&RM) under a single, streamlined governance model. This approach replaces fragmented, programme-specific oversight with a leaner, more integrated structure, reducing duplication and enabling more effective decision-making across all customer-facing transformation work.

The programme has established strong governance through the Customer Management Cluster with delivery monitoring via ECRM Programme Board and escalating to Customer Management Steering Group chaired by the Director General of Customer Services. The ECRM Programme is led by a suitably experienced and empowered Senior Responsible Officers (SRO). Formal GMPP reporting commenced in 2025 and following the changes introduced across government under Project Reset, NISTA confirmed that the programme should remain on GMPP from 1 April 2026.

Feasibility

HMRC has deliberately adopted a phased, evidence-led delivery approach that reduces delivery risk and limits exposure at each stage. Rather than attempting a large-scale transformation in a single step, ECRM is being delivered incrementally through a structured test, learn and scale model. This enables capabilities to be proven in live operational settings, lessons to be incorporated into future releases, and investment decisions to be informed by demonstrable evidence of delivery success, user adoption and benefits realisation.

The programme is being delivered by a dedicated team of project and IT specialists, with ongoing recruitment to secure all necessary skills. While the leadership and delivery partners bring significant expertise, the scale and complexity of consolidating multiple legacy systems into a single platform present substantial challenge. The team is actively managing risks associated with skills gaps, integration, and business continuity, recognising that success will require sustained effort, adaptability, and close collaboration across HMRC.

HMRC has already established the core capability, governance and delivery foundations required to support this approach. Dedicated programme leadership, multidisciplinary delivery teams, programme governance, commercial arrangements, are in place and continue to mature. The development of the programme and supplier governance will also support effective delivery.

An independent NISTA Review in March 2026 provided a delivery confidence assessment of Amber, recognising the strength of programme leadership and the progress made to date, while the successful completion of the platform procurement strengthens HMRC’s ability to deliver key programme milestones within this complex landscape.

The programme has procured a best-in-class CRM platform capable of scaling to meet the department’s strategic needs. At this point we have committed to an initial implementation of 4 priority use cases as a first tranche of delivery. This funding will establish the core foundation; build out capability for a single trusted customer record; deliver improved registration and records management; support secure digital communications embedded within case handling; and digitise the existing inheritance tax service where new ECRM capabilities will transform this into a modern digital service. Successful procurement is an important milestone but does not in itself demonstrate successful implementation. Delivery confidence remains dependent on supplier mobilisation, implementation partner onboarding, maturity of the delivery model, management of dependencies and successful business adoption.

These capabilities in themselves will reduce duplication, support more efficient handling, and improve the overall experience for customers and colleagues. They also provide a test bed on which to assess future scaling of the wider platform across wider tax regimes and services. This assessment covers the first phase of the programme. In terms of feasibility, HMRC’s ability to deliver in this complex landscape has been strengthened by the successful, and very recent completion, of the main platform procurement.

Future delivery will be informed by a roadmap-led approach, with clear decision points and governance controls, such as relevant break clauses in the vendor contract, that allow HMRC to assess delivery performance, affordability, benefits realisation, business readiness and strategic alignment before committing to further scale. This ensures that subsequent investment decisions are evidence-based and proportionate to the confidence gained through earlier phases.

For the first 3 to 4 years, it is anticipated that the new SaaS platform and legacy systems will operate in parallel. This phased approach allows for careful implementation, testing, and risk management ensuring business continuity. As more functions move to the new platform, legacy systems will be gradually retired. An extended programme timeline reflects the challenges of integrating customised legacy solutions and supporting HMRC’s transformation while safeguarding service delivery.

While delivery remains subject to risks, including supplier mobilisation, delivery model maturity and cross-cluster dependencies, these are being actively managed through established governance, experienced programme leadership, and a phased delivery model. The programme will onboard an implementation partner in late 2026 to provide further ECRM delivery expertise. Taken together, these arrangements provide confidence that the programme can be delivered successfully and that future expansion will occur only where there is clear evidence of readiness, value and delivery confidence.

The establishment of programme and supplier governance, the support of an Implementation Partner, use of dedicated and experienced programme staff, subject matter experts from across HMRC and the use of contingent labour to fill any knowledge or skills gaps will help ensure the programme is feasible and deliverable. However, delivery is contingent on successful supplier mobilisation, delivery model maturity and effective management of dependencies across the cluster.

Value for money

The programme has been developed in line with HMT’s Green Book guidance. Value for money has been assessed via an options appraisal which has been documented in the ECRM Programme Business Case.

As the programme remains at an early stage of delivery, value for money assessments are necessarily based on the evidence currently available. To inform affordability and investment decisions prior to procurement, a Should Cost Model (SCM) was developed in 2025 using market analysis and industry benchmarks to estimate whole-life platform and to inform transformation costs. The SCM established the cost baseline against which procurement outcomes and supplier proposals could be assessed.

The Should Cost Model SCM provides the basis for an initial investment commitment of up to £272.6 million through to December 2027. This funding supports procurement of the platform, delivery of the first four use cases, and associated transformation activities. Competitive procurement and market engagement are intended to secure optimum pricing, innovation and value for money.

Cost estimates, commercial arrangements and value for money assessments will continue to mature as procurement activity concludes and delivery plans develop. An updated business case is planned towards the end of 2027 to reflect procurement outcomes, refined cost assumptions and realised learning from delivery. Future investment decisions will be taken incrementally and will be subject to further affordability, value for money and delivery assessments before funding is committed.

The main ECRM benefits are Increased Yield and Efficiencies of £815 million (cumulatively over a 10-year period), through a unified customer contact platform that joins up customer data. Migration to a Core Software as a Service Customer Relationship Management platform also improves technical health and provides cost savings, by replacing around 72 legacy systems. This currently shows a projected benefit range of £924 million to £1.25 billion, over a 15-year contract length, with a 40% level of optimism bias applied (£650million to 880 million excluding optimism bias and VAT). At this stage these figures are subject to ongoing management of delivery risks and future reassessment.

In addition to the quantified benefits, ECRM represents a strategic enabling investment that establishes the core platform capability for future service onboarding. Benefits associated with additional services will be assessed and realised through separate business cases, ensuring that further investment decisions are supported by evidence of affordability, benefits realisation and value for money. Benefits in this assessment comprise direct programme benefits and longer-term enabling benefits. Benefits associated with future services and onboarding activity will be assessed and approved through separate business cases.

On this basis and the continued assurance and control of the costs and benefits, the programme represents value for money. This judgement relates to the approved phase of expenditure to December 2027 and the currently approved scope. The wider long-term value for money case for enterprise-wide deployment will be reassessed through future business cases and Accounting Officer Assessments as costs, benefits and delivery evidence mature.

Conclusion

As the Accounting Officer for HMRC, I have considered my assessment of the Enterprise Customer Relationship Management Programme and concluded that the proposal is value for money and deliverable. I have therefore approved it as of 30 October 2026. I have prepared this summary to set out the key points which informed my decision. If any of these factors change materially during the lifetime of this programme, I undertake to prepare a revised summary, setting out my updated assessment. This summary will be published on the government website (GOV.UK). Copies will be deposited in the Library of the House of Commons and sent to the Comptroller and Auditor General, Treasury Officer of Accounts and Chair of the Public Accounts Committee.

Accounting Officer’s name: J.P. Marks, Chief Executive HM Revenue and Customs.

Signature:

Date of signing: 30 October 2026