Sustaining or improving service outcomes whilst reducing cost

1. Sustaining or improving service outcomes whilst reducing cost Colin Wales Sales Director, Civica Public Protection

2. The brief…. • Do not do an advert for Civica

3. Not and advert - Credibility • 240+ customer sites including: • 162 Environmental Health(around 47% of UK total) • 92 Licensing • 145 Trading Standards • 128 Private Sector Housing • 95 Anti-Social Behaviour • 53 Planning • 18 Building Control • 10 Land Charges • 49 Waste Management

4. The brief…. • Invite a customer to present on their response to the cuts. • Explain how your customers have implemented change to respond to the prevailing conditions and the role that technology can play in delivering efficiencies.

5. The audience.... • Departments (often/usually) run on a shoestring challenged with reducing costs still further. • The ‘Invisible’ service? Front line but less obviously so than others.

6. Costs • People (salaries, pensions, NI, ...) • Assets (property and contents, vehicles, IT estate) • Internal services (IT, income management, procurement, payroll, HR) • Travel and subsistence • Legal (prosecutions, litigation ...) • Third party consumables, software and services

7. Software solution?

8. Starting small and working up.. • Use what you have better • Merge or replace multiple databases to save costs (external and internal) • Introduce channel migration (citizen contact strategies). Consider costs of CRM and alternatives • Mobilise staff • Shared Services or Systems • ‘Virtual’ Unitary approach • Outsource to third party

9. 1. Use what you have better • Less than 10% of software users know in full what their systems can actually do. • Training budget cuts mean that many staff use inefficient practices through lack of knowledge • System administrators should initiate change, not just housekeep

10. For example, at the most basic level…. • Mail merge and auto-document production:A Lincolnshire Council (using Civica) compiled letters from templates then attached them to system records manually editing them before sending.

11. The maths.. • Noise complaints @ 500 per year • 3 letters per complaint on average • Each letter took 5-6 minutes to create, save and print • Auto mail merge reduced this to 2 mins • So 3 min x 3 letters x 500 complaints = 4500m = 75 hours = 2 FTE weeks

12. Missed bins • A Warwickshire Council receive 15,000 missed bin reports annually. Each is taken as a call then recorded onto their system for subsequent reporting.

13. The maths.. • 15,000 missed bin reports • Approx 5 minutes per ‘contact’ • Introducing a web form that can insert the report directly into the software reduces this down to 2 minutes (with some automated reporting to identify new calls)

14. If 30% of transactions moved to the web the equation is: 15000 x 30% x 3 minute saving =13500m = 225 hours = 32 standard working days = 6 weeks of work

15. Anecdotally... • Allied to that is the idea of short term time per task reporting. Time monitoring is never popular but if you get staff to use it knowing that all you want is an honest assessment of time per task with no “witch hunt” and that it’s for a limited period of time then you should get reasonable accuracy. Use that data to look at how long certain job types take and review the processes regarding how certain job types are handled. We changed the way we handled barking dogs - the time monitoring data showed that we spent longer on them than other noise jobs because none of us knew everything about controlling dogs. Answer: get the dog warden to be the lead officer on dog barking jobs – result: time spent on dog barking jobs dropped by about 30%.

16. And in print... • Rochdale’s Strategic Housing Service run a Handyperson Scheme. In the early days of the Handyperson Scheme, the system recorded some 1500-2000 separate repair jobs, as in line with funding requirements at that time, each individual job had to be recorded, in addition to household information. • Subsequent streamlined recording and analysis has helped the Rochdale Handyperson team reduce the administration overhead by the equivalent of approx two FTE’s, a saving of over £20,000 per year.

17. 7 slides down to 1 • Time spent on analysing processes and challenging conventional wisdom can result in substantial efficiency gains leading to genuine cost savings. • Make sure staff are trained properly and allow system administrators time to develop, not just ‘housekeep’ your software.

18. 2. Replace other databases • Licensing • Corporate complaints • Waste Management • Homelessness • Anti Social Behaviour case management • Strategic (Private Sector) Housing • Post room • Excel/Access ??

19. Example • The goal of Herefordshire's transformation programme is to make the organisation more efficient and customer focused, saving £5m per year. Technology introduced across the organisation will remove duplication of services, integrate customer and support services, offer performance management and significantly reduce the amount of paper across the organisation. As a result, the council will make significant savings and workers will be able to work more flexible and focus on customer requirements. Akif Kazi, Programme Director, Herefordshire Council 120 systems in to 1

20. Pragmatically… • There is a cost of change • Benefits over 3 – 5 years • Not a ‘silver bullet’ – beware of inefficiency creeping in through bad fits • Suppliers can expand existing systems at very low cost • Also has benefit of reducing TCO through reduced central IT support overhead • ‘Self interest’ has to be dealt with for niche systems and some compromise may be required.

21. 3. Channel Migration

22. Strategic Focus • Capitalise on the use of technology to sustain service outcomes while spending less • Take a whole customer view, working across organisational structures and fulfilling more requirements in one targeted transaction • Integrate and personalise service delivery • Radical change to business processes to deliver key outcomes • Public-private approach to harness resource, expertise and experience Transformlocal services Deliver genuine savings Sustain servicecapacity

23. Actions • Service Requests with Tracking • Third party access direct (Contractors?) • Intelligent use of maps on-line • ‘Real time’ info using web and mobile technologies • Does a CRM system pay for itself or is it just another handling point that adds cost? What can be achieved using suppliers ‘bolt-ons’ or through in-house development?

24. An exemplar site • Own on-line forms • Self written mobile solutions • Parish web sites • Contractor record updates • All from a small but focused internal development team using open integration to back office systems

25. 4. Mobilise staff • Free up desk space • Reduce travelling times • Save fuel and transport costs • Reduce double data entry • Real time information for internal and public use • Value of instant information as a cashable saving…..

26. Islington Council • Starting from a portfolio of around 40 office buildings, the Council has now released 12 of them, and refurbished 13 as Smart Working environments, where the focus is on collaboration rather than working at fixed desks. This has led to a 10% reduction in accommodation running costs. • According to Paul Savage, Smart Programme Manager at Islington, • “It’s been an interesting journey and we’ve learned a lot along the way. In an organisation like a Council, there is no one-size-fits-all solution. So, while building up an integrated framework for delivery, the roll-out of Smart Working in each service has to take account of the particular needs of that service, and where they are starting from.” “After salaries, property and facilities are the biggest costs to councils. We need the people much more than we need desks, and the more we can cut our overheads, the better we can maintain our services.”

27. 5. Shared systems and/or services • Real cashable savings • Fewer system administrators • Reduced IT support costs • Less hardware to refresh and support • Harmonising processes and practices • Single mobile platform across multiple sites • Resource deployment benefit

28. Shared Services and virtual regulatory services bodies • Models of sharing • Systems, people, customer focus • Examples of progress • Thanet/Dover (Revenues & Benefits) • West Sussex (County, Districts, Fire, Police sharing transport management) • EH: Staffordshire Moorlands/High Peak • South East Library Management • Worcestershire Regulatory Services • Tandridge-Runnymede

29. Tandridge and Runnymede Councils • Runnymede use Civica APP in EH • Tandridge had an In-House system that was at end of life • The sites agreed a ‘backed-off’ support agreement whereby Tandridge staff could access and use Runnymede’s APP system from their own offices.

30. Cost benefits • Council to Council arrangements circumvent usual procurement rules so cost and resource saved. • System support is now shared between Councils making it attractive for both (Runnymede’s share of the costs drops) • Hugely reduced implementation costs • Possibility of shared database adding value through intelligence sharing and code harmonisation • Staff training costs lowered through ‘buddy’ system for software familiarisation • Security maintained and formal returns still run separately

31. Example (Association for Public Service Excellence web site) • Two district councils in the East of England are currently working towards merging their back office services (finance, human resources, ITC, revenues and benefits, and customer service functions). Detailed work towards the shared services model will begin in the two districts in autumn 2010 and is due to be completed by March 2011. They have decided to deliver the merged services in-house and establish a jointly owned company. The authorities expect to save £1.8 million in total per annum and also see improvements in services, such as faster benefits processing times and greater flexibility during periods of high demand for services.

32. 6. Outsourcing options • Have specific systems hosted by suppliers (or neighbours!) • Have all IT hosted and managed • Contract out service provision (including to ‘Co-Ops’ or MBO’s’……?

33. Suffolk – a ‘zero footprint’ model? Coalition Government Promise: Power of general competence • Giving public sector workers a new right to form employee owned co-operatives More community leadership • Smaller organisation focussed on consumer advocacy •Less direct service delivery •Assets into communities

34. Engage with your supplier rather than just beating them up • Use what you have better • Merge or replace multiple databases to save costs (external and internal) • Introduce channel migration (citizen contact strategies). Consider costs of CRM and alternatives • Mobilise staff • Shared Services or Systems • ‘Virtual’ Unitary approach • Outsource to third party

35. One for the suppliers.. • Reduce the cost of procurement to you and us! • We have genuinely seen procurements that have an extended and complex process and have used consultants and have cost MORE than the item being procured. • Hammersmith and Fulham leader Stephen Greenhalgh: "There's a lot of bureaucracy involved with delivering local services. You often find that of the £3 we spend, £1 is spent deciding what to do with the other two.”

36. Any questions?