Colchester Borough Council introduces Self-Service Portal for Citizens

Faced with a rapidly growing population and an increasing demand for better customer services, Colchester Borough Council has radically changed the way it delivers services to its residents by introducing a new customer self-service portal known as ‘iConnect’. 

“The population of Colchester is expected to grow significantly over the next few years” explained Pam Donnelly, Executive Director at Colchester BC. “This coincided with a growing expectation from our customers of the same 24/7 access to services that we are all now used to getting from private sector companies”.

The Colchester BC team also realised that they needed to bring together information about their range of customers across the Council’s different departments and systems.

“Customers expect their Local Authority to be a single organisation but traditionally in many Councils there is a vast array of data sitting in different departments and different systems. We knew that if we could share customer data more intelligently we could improve the quality of our services, increase efficiency and make self-service a reality while still working within the data protection laws”; explained Phil Pettit, ICT Program Manager at Colchester BC.

The first public-facing phase of the iConnect project sees Council Tax, Housing Services and Benefits initially available on the portal, and sitting behind the solution is the new Customer Index, with both pieces provided by Firmstep.

The project has already delivered savings because these were built into the business case from the start. The new solutions that Colchester BC purchased cost less than the solutions they were replacing. More savings are expected from the project as a result of having more services online but these will be for the individual service areas to promote.

Phil Pettit will be presenting at the Firmstep Annual User Conference 2011 to explain the journey leading to iConnect and the future of the portal.

Contact Harlow

Janet Jackson from Harlow Council describes their experience of implementing and using AchieveService.

January 2011 – Seems such a long time ago now but that was when we got the go ahead… we were actually going to design our new CRM system and I have no IT knowledge…hmm, that could be a challenge. So much to do and so little time to do it, as some one once said.

February 2011 – I designed my first process….goodness me that process was awful but at the time I thought I had created a masterpiece. Then I was presented with an angel, one that never knew when to keep quiet and had no common sense but I could see the genius shining through and her name was Jo.

March 2011 – Lots happened, Russ from Firmstep took charge (thankfully) - showing us what we needed to do to get to a point where we could go live. We began online training with Frank from Firmstep who became our guru, (don’t know how we could have coped without him, although I still don’t think it was reciprocated) and the go live date was decided, 10^th May!!!

April 2011 – Pretty much every waking hour working on the system and making the training videos. They were well received by the team, even after 17 attempts to record one, due to the dog barking, phone ringing, kids fighting and people visiting, I am still experiencing the nightmares they caused.

May 2011 – 10 days and counting, it was a pretty stressful time however we knew it would be all worthwhile….really it would.

10^th May 2011 – Go Live Day!!!! It worked. It actually worked, we got a system up and running in 11 weeks…..Wow.

Since then we haven’t stopped, I could ramble on for hours about the system, how brilliant, easy to use, intelligent and the best purchase Harlow Council ever made. But I am biased, so I have asked some of the users, both internal services and external partners to give me their views.

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“The new system has been in use for approximately 11 weeks. Although there are some teething problems Janet and Jo are working hard to resolve them. Kier Harlow and Harlow Council have in my opinion always maintained a good working relationship but the new system has improved this by ensuring that all members of staff take ownership of their work, complaint levels have reduced due to the questions that are being asked at the first point of contact and the customers are being given the correct information at the same time.

Staff members are more confident in contacting various departments across the contract to ensure that a speedy conclusion’s are forth coming.”

Kier Harlow – Manages the Council’s Housing & Non Housing repairs, Street Scene and Ground Maintenance Services via a Joint Venture Company.

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“The new system has saved us (in the office) time and money with only having to print out one sheet for each type of collection and only having to ‘answer/input’ variations other than not outs, I find it easier and faster to use as it is web based and not on a shared system therefore giving everyone in the office access at once rather than having to wait for someone to finish what they are doing first. We prefer using this system and it is preventing the crews from returning needlessly on missed collections.”

Veolia – Manages the Council’s domestic waste clearance services.

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“Although its still early days, the new Contact system is already proving a more user friendly and effective system than the previous system.  Looking at the point of contact in the first instance, the monitoring of each enquiry or complaint raised seems to be effective and fast. The Advisors are given a list of questions and depending on the answers, will then direct the enquiry or complaint to the appropriate department for action. This alone should ensure the appropriate department receives the work promptly, eliminating unnecessary delays and confusion, delivering a more effective Customer Service.  The way in which the system works will help to ‘naturally train’ Advisors in areas of Council work which will be beneficial in the recruitment of new staff.”

Harlow Council Housing Management Team

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“The whole process from the procurement of the service to the day we went live with it has been really straight forward. It has been really refreshing to have a system that we can build ourselves and which we can tailor to suit our needs and those of our customers. Whilst there has always been a really good level of support from Firmstep, we haven’t had to be experts in IT to implement it. The flexibility that the products offer mean that we can completely change the way in which we work and not need to worry that they system can’t adapt to it.

Overall we are really pleased with it and although barely three months in we are already seeing the benefits both financially and in the quality of the service that we are able to offer our customers.”

Simon Pipe, Customer Services Manager

The Forms Catalogue Revamped

Once upon a time, we had a Forms Catalogue where customers could connect with each other online and share some of their work. This easy-to-use system allowed customers to upload and download form XML files that they could take to and from their own sites, as well as giving the ability to leave comments to help other site users.

However, form technology and customer expectations moved on and the forms in the catalogue got outdated, so the catalogue was temporarily removed. Since its disappearance, a lot of the suggestions we receive at the company are along the lines of “BRING BACK THE FORMS CATALOGUE!” And that’s exactly what we’ve done – we have a new and improved Forms Catalogue up on our Extranet.

The benefits of this system are massive and obvious: with so many of our customers using our products to solve similar problems, it makes sense to share information with one another to avoid duplicating efforts, thus saving time that could be better spent elsewhere. It’s also a great place to network with people working on similar projects, or who may wish to collaborate in the future.

At this stage, we’re asking customers to step forward with any forms that they’ve built, that they think would be particularly useful for other customers. You can simply grant us permission to extract the forms from your site, email us the XMLs, or upload them yourself! We want an expanding library that allows you to showcase your work and brings our customers together in an online space.

If you have a form you’d like to share, send an email to enquiries@firmstep.com

Examples from East Riding of Yorkshire Council

Moira Bielby, Senior IT Liaison Officer, shares a little of what the East Riding of Yorkshire Council have implemented using AchieveForms.

The East Riding of Yorkshire Council migrated to the Firmstep Platform in September 2010 and use both AchieveForms and the Process Module. We have a mature portfolio of forms that are used extensively across our service areas for both internal and external use.

Integration of forms and processes with back-office systems and our payment portal has allowed us to encourage customers to self-serve.  This has helped us realise both efficiency and activity cost savings, as well as improved compliance with policies and procedures. Some examples of forms with payment integration are:

• Payment for a locally hosted European fishing competition
• School bus season ticket application
• Local land charge search
• Applications for licences
• Copy certificates for registration services

Examples of internal processes are:

• Application for an identity badge
• Rail and travel booking
• Reporting of property repairs
• E-annual leave booking

The E-annual leave booking process is an excellent example of integration using Active Directory, a web service and an API to our personnel system. The process allows staff to self-serve leave entitlement, and allows us to automatically processes 4000 transactions per month. 

Integrating to save

Many councils I have spoken to recently have told of the efficiency gains they are experiencing by integrating AchieveForms with back-office systems. Being able to push submitted data directly into a back-office system is giving a better audit trail and saving the time otherwise wasted having to re-keyinformation.

One council has estimated that integrating an internal process with their HR system has saved around a minute of re-keying per submission. When we put this value into the context of 200-300 submissions per day, we can say that this integration is saving half a day’s work for an employee, who can thus focus on more pressing tasks.

Councils are not only pushing information into back-office systems but also using the data lookup for checking and validation. This ensures that accurate and consistent data is submitted by citizens, and removes the need to chase missing information, again saving councils precious time.

With the current pressures councils are facing to minimise costs, such integrations can play a key role in making such savings achievable.

South Ribble save

South Ribble Borough Council went live with AchieveService in September 2010, with the main aims of improving customer service while saving money. The implementation was a huge success, as Director of Business Transformation Ian Parker explains:

We measured the financial efficiencies generated within this implementation and they exceed £200,000 since going live 6 months ago. Our whole life savings (measured across 5 years) increases the real cashable saving to over £400,000.

A full case study on South Ribble’s AchieveService implementation is available here.

The first post…

Firmstep provide online solutions for councils, allowing them to both maximise their customer service while still minimising their own costs. This blog will share the success stories from councils using Firmstep’s products.

If you are using Firmstep products and want to appear on this blog and share how you’ve been using them, please get in touch with us.