A document management system has improved services at Telford &
Wrekin Council, writes Karl Cushing
Telford & Wrekin Council is using an electronic document
management (EDM) system to improve customer service by providing
front-line staff in its revenues and benefits department with
better support and rapid access to information.
The council started looking into adopting an EDM system for its
council tax, benefits, business rates, commercial rents and sales
ledger debts in April 2000, before settling on the Docs On-Line
service from software firm Anite Public Sector in August 2000.
Anite began by scanning benefits documents dated between August
1999 and 2000 - more than 850,000 files - onto the EDM system. This
meant that benefits and customer service staff were able to access
recent documents as soon as the system went live.
All correspondence sent to the council is now directed to the Docs
On-Line processing centre in Sale, Cheshire, where it is opened and
the documents batched, scanned, indexed and returnable personal
documents - about 20% of the documents received - logged for return
to their owners. The document images are then delivered overnight
to the council's servers using a frame-relay communications link,
where they are allocated to the relevant staff.
Anite staff handle about 100,000 pages a month for the council,
which now only deals with exceptional cases itself. The company
also provides application management services, training and weekly
performance reports, which form the basis for regular meetings
between the two parties.
Andrew Meredith, revenue manager at Telford & Wrekin Council,
says the system has brought multiple benefits.
It enabled all documents dated before August 2000 to be moved
off-site, freeing up enough space for the benefits teams to move
back into the civic offices. The system also allowed the benefits
service to start looking at performance management and helped the
council set up a contact centre.
Another benefit is that the EDM system is integrated with the
council's benefits and council tax systems. "They use common
indexing," explains Meredith. "You can hot-key from one to the
other."
Meredith says Anite staff have been "very good and very responsive"
and the company has met its core service level agreement objective
of ensuring that 98% of documents are in council workers' in-trays
within 24 hours. He estimates that clerical effort in post handling
and document storage has been reduced by about 50%, and there has
been minimal downtime since the system went live on 26 February
last year.
The council is currently formulating a document disposal policy
with Anite, which will allow documents to be securely destroyed
three months after scanning, and it is looking at ways of rolling
the EDM system out further.
"All the staff can see the benefits, and the contact centre and
processing staff think it is the best thing since sliced bread,"
says Meredith. "But the major benefit for us is the improved
service for the customer."