Decision Request Form INDIVIDUAL CABINET MEMBER

Cabinet Office

Ext: 0472

DDI : 01895 250472 My Ref: SEC

To: COUNCILLOR RAYMOND PUDDIFOOT LEADER OF THE COUNCIL

COUNCILLOR JONATHAN BIANCO CABINET MEMBER FOR FINANCE AND BUSINESS SERVICES

c.c. All Members of Executive Scrutiny Committee c.c. Chairman of Corporate Services and

Partnerships Policy Overview Committee c.c. Christopher Neale, Corporate Director c.c. Steve Palmer, Finance and Resources c.c. Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat Group Offices (inspection copy)

Date: 1 August 2008

Decision Request Form

RELEASE OF CAPITAL EXPENDITURE FOR HIP CUSTOMER

EXPERIENCE PROJECTS

Attached is a report requesting that a decision be made by you as an individual Cabinet Member. I can confirm that the decision has been identified in the Forward Plan and it is therefore in order for you to make a decision. You should take a decision on or after Monday 11 August 2008 in order to meet Constitutional requirements about publication of decisions that are to be made.

Please indicate your decision on the duplicate memo supplied, and return it to me when you have made your decision. I will then arrange for the formal notice of decision to be

published. You may wish to discuss the report with the Corporate Director before it is made. If you do not wish to accept the officers recommendation and the reasons for it, you are urged to contact the Corporate Director before making this decision.

Please note that your decision may be subject to call-in and will not therefore be implemented until 5 working days after it has been published.

NIKKI STUBBS

Cabinet and Committee Business Manager

Title of Report: RELEASE OF CAPITAL EXPENDITURE FOR HIP CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE PROJECTS

Decision made:

Reasons for your decision : (e.g. as stated in report)

Alternatives considered and rejected : (e.g. as stated in report)

RELEASE OF CAPITAL EXPENDITURE FOR HIP CUSTOMER

EXPERIENCE PROJECTS

Cabinet Member Councillor Raymond Puddifoot and Councillor Jonathan Bianco Cabinet Portfolio Leader of the Council and Cabinet Member for Finance and

Business Services

Officer Contact Steve Palmer, Finance and Resources Papers with report Customer Experience PID

HEADLINE INFORMATION

Purpose of report Authority is required for release of funding on capital item linked to the customer experience work stream up to a maximum of

£202,050 in 2008/9 financial year. Contribution to our

plans and strategies

This funding is key to delivering our Customer Experience Strategy. It enables us to modernise services creating more efficient channels of access for our customers, increasing

Customer Satisfaction and creating savings for the organisation. Financial Cost £202,050 is required in 2008/9, which will be contained within HIP

Customer Access & Contact Management budget within the approved capital programme and could lead to full year savings of £152.5k relating to the transfer of Adult Social Care staff into the Contact Centre, delivering a full year saving of £100k, increased income of £30k in Registrars from improved Nationality Checking and a reduction of 1.0 fte post within the Contact Centre resulting from improved work processes

Relevant Policy Overview Committee

Corporate Services and Partnerships

Ward(s) affected All

RECOMMENDATION

That approval be given to the releasing funds of £202,050 for deliverables for the provision of the Customer Experience Work Stream programme.

1. Purpose

This report is to request release of funds for the Customer Experience Work Stream project, which oversees key HIP deliverables. This provision is in the HIP approved capital programme for 2008/09.

2 Information and background.

2.1 The Customer Experience work stream programme for 2008/9 is focussed on putting the customer at the heart of everything we do. To achieve this we need to modernise the way we deliver services, offering choice and convenience for the customer whilst streamlining Council processes to deliver a more proactively targeted service which is quicker, cheaper and provides resolution at first point of contact.

2.2 The Onyx Customer Relationship Management System (CRM).

The CRM is a critical tool to our Customer Experience objectives. It is not only used in the Contact Centre to record all contact with customers, it is also deployed across services to record service requests and track them, and this deployment is part of a continual roll out programme. £149,050 of the requested £202,050 is for the support and development contract for the CRM in line with the agreed programme. (Appendix

attached with work package breakdown.) 2.3. CRM developer/support supplier

An EU tender is currently taking place to appoint a supplier for a 3 year period. This capital release report is requesting the funding to be released for 2008/09 as we need to fund our current supplier. Once the tender is complete and an approved supplier

appointed there will be a final report to Cabinet in which adjustments may be made in terms of supplier costs.

2.4 The purpose of Onyx CRM.

By recording customer contact it is possible to identify weaknesses in service delivery and address them. An example of this identified by the CRM was a high volume of people telephoning the contact centre because they didn’t understand the Housing Benefit entitlement calculation letter. The CRM identified this problem and as a

consequence an explanation leaflet was designed and despatched with the entitlement letter, this has reduced calls from 960 a month to 300.

When you consider the cost of a telephone interaction it is possible to clearly see how the CRM can enable us to make efficiency savings.

2.5 Migration Efficiency Savings:

The following unit cost models for current access channel activity is published as: £9 for a face-to-face interaction

£5 for a telephone interaction £0.17 for a web interaction.

The volume of calls taken last year in the Contact Centre was 295,456. This programme will enable us to target migration of 1% of these calls onto the web to achieve the

planned saving of 1 full time equivalent (fte) in the Customer Contact Centre in 2009/10. This has been identified within the Medium Term Financial Forecast (MTFF), a saving that equates to £22,500 per annum. This investment will improve customer service in line with the recommendations of the Contact Centre review report and help deliver the

Council priority of putting the customer at the heart of everything we do. Currently we are using the CRM to determine what our highest volumes of calls are to enable us to use customer insight to target these types of enquiry for channel migration. Without

investment in the CRM and the capability that version 6 will give us our channel migration strategy will not be achieved.

3 Onyx upgrade.

We currently use version 5 of the OneServe CRM software. Funding is required to upgrade to version 6 which had a target release date of June 2008.

Where possible, costly manual processes need to be replaced by automation using web service technology. Version 6 of the OneService CRM software enables this. A good example of this is where customers contact us via sms, or via our website. At present both of these contacts are converted into emails that go to our Contact Centre where agents then manually type details into various software systems. This year’s work programme concentrates on making the manual intervention obsolete.

Version 6 requires new hardware and operating software, including upgrades to the existing SQL server database version and version of Windows, and new virtual server environments to allow development and training. This will allow us to carry out parallel running, both supporting the current operational system, configure and develop the new system features and then cross train users in the new system features. We will also need to purchase some consultancy from Onyx to aid with data and configuration transfer. There will also need to be training in the new functionality and configuration of existing applications onto the new platform. (See Appendix A for breakdown in cost).

4 Customer Contact Centre Expansion.

Expanding our Customer Contact Centre is a priority of the Customer Experience work stream. The Contact Centre cannot be expanded without the development of its key tool – the CRM. Customers and Services are benefiting from all initial contact being

consistently and professionally managed through a single point of access and

efficiencies are being made by targeting service delivery to those who need it rather than expensive blanket delivery. An example of this is recycling bags. From data from the CRM we have mapped usage onto ward maps to identify which wards are more actively engaged in recycling and target these wards with more supplies rather than wasting blanket supplies or waiting for costly telephone interaction to request more bags. This has improved services to the customer and achieved operational efficiencies.

New services migrating to the Contact Centre require Onyx development work, and existing services require development work as they modernise and business processes change.

The Contact Centre has since been expanded to include the following Services: • Housing Benefits

• Housing Needs

• Private CRM development supplier Housing • Council Tax

• Social Services – Older Peoples Service • Environment

• Harassment

• Student Admissions • Planning

• Trees and Landscapes • Electoral Services

This year there will be three further additions: • Registrars

• Building Control • Adult Social Care

Adult Social Care, Health and Housing have a target saving of £100k for the migration of the contact service into the Contact Centre for 2008/09.

5. Booking Engine

The implementation of the Artemis booking engine has taken place in Registrars where it is running parallel with their current system until cutover in July 2008. Many Registrars services use an automated booking engine whereas up until now we have used manual systems. The system we have purchased includes capabilities to interface with the Onyx CRM system but this is a separate module that we need to fund. Once cutover and a period of bedding in has been achieved in Registrars we want to roll the booking engine out along with migration of contact to the Contact Centre. An interface with the CRM will prevent a duplication of entry for Contact Centre agents. The cost of the interface written by Artemis is £12k.

6. Resident Entitlement Card

The Resident Entitlement card project will require CRM development work in the following areas:

• Data source for card distribution.

• Interface building between the CRM and the card management system, the library management system and the LBH website.

• System testing resource.

• Dataloads from various data sources into the CRM.

A separate resource bid is being submitted for CRM support/developer tasks on work packages but 11 days of the current supplier/developer time for a feasibility study to scope the full Resident Card project in terms of ICT.

7. Total Cost 08/09

The total cost for this work programme is therefore estimated at £149,050 for CRM development supplier services (breakdown in attached Appendix), £41k for Onyx

upgrade services, and £12k for developing an interface between Artifax booking engine and the Onyx CRM.

8. Financial Implications:

The Capital Programme includes a budget of £202k for the continued investment in Customer Access and Contact Management. This report is seeking to release £202k from the capital programme, which has the potential to reduce staffing costs, particularly in Adult Social Care (where there is a saving target of £100k) and Building Control, increase income from Nationality Checking within the Registrars service by £30k and, through improved work processes, enable the Contact Centre to reduce its staffing levels by 1 fte in 2009/10 delivering a saving of £22.5k.

Failure to make this investment in these Customer Experience projects would mean the following:

- A failure to meet LBH’s Information Strategy target of making the CRM the key customer hub across all Council services.

- Inability to deliver recommendations from service review programme.

- In the longer term the current investment in the CRM system would be put at risk, Onyx will only support the current and previous software version, so when

version 7 is released in 2009/10 support would cease for version 5.

- Greatly reduced capacity to migrate complex business transactions into the Contact Centre, we need the enhanced features of version 6.

- Reduced ability to exploit savings and efficiencies through self-service: the strategy of allowing customers to conduct their own web based transactions will be jeopardised.

- Difficulty in producing business re-engineering to enable streamlined customer service delivery.

- Difficulty in enabling customer insight through patchy recording of service contact data.

Corporate Finance

£202k is in the capital budget approved by Council on 28 February 2008 and is to be funded from Council resources, namely capital receipts or unsupported borrowing. The revenue financing cost of this capital has already been factored into the MTFF model and hence the release of these monies will not have any additional adverse impact on the revenue account in future years. The potential revenue savings more than offset the cost of capital for this particular project.

Legal

There are no specific legal implications arising from this report Background papers

Appendix A – Programme of Customer Experience Development work: Planned

implementation

Dependencies Work required in 08/09

to deliver customer experience projects. Cost Service Benefit Annual Saving 1.1 The Planning Service Building control. Target date December 2008.

Recruitment of CSA staff, Planning

consultation of existing staff. If target date slips, funding still needed this year to deliver work required now to make migration possible.

• Development of

Onyx software to Building control business enquiries and the process of delivering resolution.

• Testing of software.

• Dataload of uprn into

Ocella and Onyx from LLPG. • Address matching issue resolution. • Process re-engineering to deliver streamline process. • Development of business training manuals for CCC and training manuals for front and back office.

• Training.

• Creation of infobase

• Development of management reports for Planning from Onyx. 30 days of CRM development supplier time - £16,500 Reduction in back office posts to be determined, once migration toolkit complete. 1.2 Registrars Implementation of booking engine. Integration of CRM with booking engine.

Above implementation tasks which have begun in the initial configuration plans for Registrars. 15 days of CRM development supplier time. £8,250 70% of all Registrar contact to go to CCC equating in reduction of 1 fte 30k income from extending service.

Planned

implementation

Dependencies Work required in 08/09

to deliver customer experience projects. Cost Service Benefit Annual Saving to be re-purposed to generate approx. 30k revenue for Council through nationality checking service. 1.3 Adult Social

Care. Target 31 Oct 2008

Agreed model on location of single point.

CRM development supplier is currently providing address matching software

development service to synchronise properties in Carefirst with CRM whilst creating process for a regular feed from the Councils’ LLPG into back office property databases. 30 days of CRM development supplier time £16,500 Savings and efficiencies to be determined by Single point of access project group.

A full year saving target of £100k has been allocated within the ASCH&H budget which is reliant upon the further development of the CRM system/contact centre migration. 1.4Resident Card Feasibility study.

Scheme detail CRM development supplier

time spent on meetings with Resident card project team, analysis to create work programme.

CRM supplier cost 11 days. £6,050

Will form the basis of the project plan for the IT

development. 1.5 Onyx upgrade

to version 6 Target start date June

Software being released on time. Hardware £5k Onyx consultation £20k Onyx training £10k Increased maintenance £6k (there is no actual purchase cost for the software as they charge for consultancy) Version 6 allows web service functionality so that data can be interfaced with other systems facilitating fully transactional self-service and full implementation of channel migration

This will create additional work capacity for all members of the Contact Centre, which can be translated into at least a real saving of £22,500 per year on current manual

Planned

implementation

Dependencies Work required in 08/09

to deliver customer experience projects. Cost Service Benefit Annual Saving CRM development supplier implementation/testin g 60 days £33k plan. transactions, equivalent of 1.0 fte post 1.6 Council wide Complaints and Members liaison Onyx development for reporting amendments.

System development and reporting. CRM development supplier 10 days development - £5,500 One council approach to complaints handling. Unified reporting system. Improved customer satisfaction. Reduction in complaints through customer learning and insight. 1.7 Product maintenance and system issues. On-going technical and system support.

CRM development supplier expertise to deliver solutions to technical issues arising with Onyx

CRM development supplier 60 days £33k

Without technical support there would have been downtime on Onyx. 1.8 CRM development work for implementation of ‘Tell it once’ death notifications.

Back office co-operations

CRM programming to send out electronic notifications to all back office services.

CRM development supplier 10 days £5,500 1.9 CRM client index/dataload development

Data cleansing of back office system data

Cleansing and matching of data. CRM development supplier 10 days £5,500 1.10 CRM development to Government final definition. Bespoke work on CRM to enable data capture and

CRM development supplier 10 days

Planned

implementation

Dependencies Work required in 08/09

to deliver customer experience projects. Cost Service Benefit Annual Saving enable LBH to record data for NI14 performance indicator.

reporting developed to monitor and publish performance £5,500 1.11 CRM to development generic interfaces with Civica

Civica support Bespoke work to CRM to

send service requests from the CRM to the Housing Benefit and Council Tax workflow system software.

CRM development supplier 10 days £5,500 1.12 CRM development for Street Champions

Development of print receipts for job tickets at depot for Street Champion service requests to be recognised.

CRM development supplier 15 days £8250

Totals Total Cost in 2008/9

= £202,050 £149,050 (CRM development supplier) £41 Onyx upgrade £12 Booking Engine – Artemis interface with CRM. Total Potential Saving: £152.5k £30K from Registrar income £22.5k based on a staffing reduction in the Contact Centre of 1.0 fte post £100K Relating to the Transfer of Adult Social Care into the Contact Centre