When it comes to a paper trail, there's one thing you
can be sure of: it's only ever going to grow longer and become
harder to follow. Councils are only too aware of this problem. They
create and amass vast amounts of information about the residents in
their borough, which they may need to access at short
notice.
Much of this documentation hails from the Revenues and Benefits
Service, the department responsible for collecting council tax and
dishing out benefits. Collecting, storing and accessing this tax
and benefits data is a particularly time-consuming and complex task
for the London Borough of Brent. Almost a quarter of its residents
live in council or housing association accommodation and nigh on a
third of households − that's 32,000 homes − qualify for housing
benefits.
It's clearly vital the council deals with this mountainous pile
of documents as efficiently as possible, otherwise it could leave
tenants unable to make their payments on time and the council out
of pocket. Equally, the council doesn't want to make overpayments,
as it could incur penalties if it's found to be at fault.
The process problem
Brent had already made the giant leap from paper to electronic
processing in 1995, opting for an outsourcing arrangement running
electronic document imaging system ViewStar. Even though it was
happy with the system, by the early 2000s the system was sagging
and spluttering under the demands put upon it.
"One of the most difficult things was that it was built in an
old programming language called Lisp, so it was incredibly costly
to make changes and the people needed to make these changes were a
rare species," recalls Margaret Read, head of revenues and benefits
at Brent Council.
The rigidity of the system was also hampering the department's
performance. "Revenue is such a volatile environment, subject to
legislation, so the key thing for me was flexibility," says Read.
With such an unyielding system, it was taking staff far too long to
make the legislative changes needed and there was little room for
growth. This lack of flexibility also meant staff had evolved the
way they work to fit the system, rather than use the system as an
aid to their activities. It was high time to put people back in
charge. "We wanted to get a workflow system that met our needs
rather than be driven by it," explains Read.
The search
When the outsourcing contract ended in 2001, the council decided
it would be better value to bring the system back in-house. This
move coincided with a wider initiative to assess all aspects of its
service delivery and IT priorities in a bid to improve overall
efficiency.
The council turned to support services company Capita, which had
already been given a broad responsibility to run the council's IT
systems, to seek out a workflow system to fit its current, and just
as importantly, its future needs. Domino, the council's standard
workflow system, didn't fit the bill, but eventually Capita
pinpointed Global 360's NX Enterprise business process management
system as having the credentials for the job. In November last
year, the system went live.
One of the key benefits of NX Enterprise is that it can cope
with the 0.5Tbytes of current and historical data in the
department. Swapping to magnetic media rather than relying on
optical jukebox storage has greatly speeded up the time it takes to
access archived documents. Not only does the system ensure document
flow is more efficient, it has also had a positive effect on staff
working practices.
Employees are no longer constrained by a non-responsive system.
NX Enterprise makes it easier for staff to see how work is
progressing and to spot any potential bottlenecks. As work can be
automatically routed to the right person, it also frees up manager
time to actually manage rather than simply allocate jobs.
From a personal perspective, Read has found it far easier to
manage her own productivity. "I have absolute visibility of what
work I've got and when it's done," she says.
This new approach has had a dramatic effect on the success of
one of its key customer services, the council's One Stop Shops.
These six information points, dotted throughout the borough,
provide Brent residents with an easy and efficient way of accessing
information, including documents.
Around 10,000 Revenues and Benefits customers use the service
every month, but as there had been only one PC hooked up to
ViewStar information at each information centre, it had been a
frustrating process for staff and customers alike. NX Enterprise
has put an end to the queuing.
Lessons learned and the future
"For me, the biggest benefit has been pushing performance
forward. When we took it over we had a huge backlog and we have
cleared through all that now," says Read.
It's enabled Read and her staff to have a much clearer picture
of the day-to-day running of the department and to spot where
improvements could be made. Luckily, the system implementation went
pretty smoothly and staff found it straightforward to use.
With hindsight, however, Read realises the department should
have taken longer at the start of the project to really nail down
requirements. "We lost time at the beginning because we described
particular requirements to Global 360, but as time went on our
requirements changed and they'd already done the work."
Now the department is looking at fully integrating the workflow
solution with the council's main benefits application, as well as
with its CRM and other front-end systems.
Capitalising on its new-found flexibility, the council also
hopes to offer staff the possibility of remote working or creating
satellite offices. Customers will have more choice too. "The next
stage is to provide web services so customers can get information
centrally and a copy of bills or fill in forms online," says
Read.
Whichever path the department chooses, Read is now confident it
can rely on a document management system that is agile and
malleable enough to cope with anything central government or its
customers ask of it.