Gravesham Borough Council. Report to Cabinet. Digital Performance Manager. Single Customer Contact Platform

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1 Classification: N/A Key Decision: No Gravesham Borough Council Report to: Report to Cabinet Date: 6 July 2015 Reporting officer: Subject: Digital Performance Manager Single Customer Contact Platform Purpose and summary of report: To seek agreement to the procurement of single customer contact platform (SCCP) software. This software will be introduced through a phased approach to replace three existing corporate systems; the customer relationship management system used by customer services, the EBASE electronic forms package used on the website and the Citysourced Gravesham24 app. Recommendations: 1. That Cabinet agree to the procurement of a single customer contact centre platform, utilising funds held within the council s spend to save reserve, on the basis of such a purchase yielding annual revenue savings of approximately 13,000 per annum. 1. Introduction 1.1 The Digital Team was established to improve and develop the delivery of digital services to residents and identify opportunities to move customer contacts online. The teams work will improve the availability of council services and reduce the costs of established customer contact channels, whilst moving future service delivery towards self-service. Making it simpler for customers to request services and information 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. 1.2 Subsequently the councils Digital Strategy was approved in January 2015, and set out work that the council will undertake to achieve these outcomes. Reviewing the software used across the councils multiple contact channels and adding integrated MyAccount functionality to the councils website were two such fundamental projects. 1.3 The software currently used by the council to record service requests has been in use for a number of years. During this time there have been significant strides in technology generally and improvements in the quality and type of software within the local government market specifically. 1.4 One improvement has been the opportunity to use software hosted in the cloud with the cloud being the internet. This arrangement provides software which can be consumed over the internet, scaled up and down as required, eliminating the need to buy dedicated hardware and reducing the burden on IT support teams.

2 1.5 Across the country local authorities are capitalising on the combination of cloud based software maturing and the improvements in technology generally, to rationalise their customer contact software. Locally in Kent; Canterbury, Thanet and Dover have all moved to using the same software to record customer service requests across multiple channels, in the form of a single customer contact platform. A move towards this type of setup enables officers to confidently promote improved online services and provides better customer service. 1.6 This report seeks to outline the business case in relation to the procurement of a Single Customer Contact platform. 2. Current systems 2.1 The council currently has four separate systems to receive, record and process the majority of customer contacts. Contact Channel Contact Method Software Category Contact Centre Phone/Face to Face Customer Relationship Management System Website Online Electronic Forms Mobile Device Online Mobile Device Application Microsoft Outlook 2.2 These systems don t communicate with each other to provide a centralised view on a customer s contact history. This creates a barrier when working towards providing an online customer account facility where a customer can, for example, see their account balances and submit and track service requests. 2.3 The current customer contact centre software Front Office was introduced in 2003 for customer services officers to record customer contacts. This system records most of the contacts received by telephone but can also be used to record and some face to face transactions. Last year this system logged more than 48,000 customer interactions. 2.4 Similarly, electronic forms and mobile app software have been in use since 2006 and 2010 respectively. Some of the contacts received by these systems are sent by to customer services with an officer tasked at rekeying them into the customer contact system in order to centrally record the contact. This process is the same when receiving traditional s which are also rekeyed into the customer contact system. 2.5 In view of the goals to increase and promote digital services use, and to address the limitations of the systems we currently have, a review was undertaken on the options available to us to improve the software and processes. This review concluded that the current setup and array of systems and their limitations would not meet our future requirements without significant time, resources and financial investment to do so. 2

3 3. Single Customer Contact Platform 3.1 During the review the digital team, IT services and customer services also had demonstrations and evaluated the potential use of three different single customer contact platforms. These systems combine the ability to record transactions originating by telephone, website, and social media into one single software system. This system is hosted over the internet by the supplier, therefore being cloud based. 3.2 The evaluations of these systems were completed on the basis that each supplier s software and services would meet some initial key requirements: No major increase in annual support and maintenance. Recording a customer s online/telephone contact history Enabling self-service via the web Achieving self-service with minimal manual intervention Integrated to corporate payment solution Improving access and service delivery Reducing service delivery costs Enabling a secure single customer account Facilitating multi-channel access for mobile devices Enabling front/back office integration to high volume areas Evidence a simple and speedy development path Being cloud-based to reduce the internal resource requirement to support and maintain the service 3.3 Although each system was visually different they all demonstrated that they could meet these key requirements and also provide numerous other benefits that could improve the efficiency of processing customer contact requests. These are detailed further in Appendix Two. 3.4 Taking into account the multiple benefits it was recognised that a single customer contact platform was the most cost effective and efficient way to deliver the objectives of a digital strategy. 4. Financial Appraisal 4.1 During the evaluation of the single customer platform software it was apparent that procurement would actually result in reduced annual support and maintenance payments from the level currently paid to our existing software packages. The financial appraisal has been calculated solely on this basis with the initial costs being offset by the fifth year. The initial capital outlay consists of the first year support and maintenance, implementation costs and an element of project contingency. This is based on one supplier s highest quoted costs. 4.2 Any potential savings achieved as a result of increasing the volume of website transactions and reducing telephone calls, use of paper, printing, postage and double-handling have not been calculated although it is anticipated that in time they will be realised. 4.3 Overall, taking all of the above into account, over a five year period it is anticipated that the procurement will be cost neutral as set out below; 3

4 Revenue Savings Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 1 Year 4 1 Year 5 1 Front Office - Support Costs 0 21,700 21,700 21,700 21,700 EBASE- Support Costs 0 7,958 7,958 7,958 7,958 CitySourced - Support Costs 0 4,426 4,426 4,426 4,426 Total Revenue Savings 0 34,084 34,084 34,084 34,084 Revenue Costs SCCP Licences ( 20,200) ( 20,200) ( 20,200) ( 20,200) ( 20,200) Total Revenue Costs ( 20,200) ( 20,200) ( 20,200) ( 20,200) ( 20,200) Initial Capital Costs SCCP Implementation Cost ( 24,900) Project Contingency ( 10,000) Total Capital Costs ( 34,900) Annual Net Savings/(Cost) ( 55,100) 13,884 13,884 13,884 13,884 Cumulative Savings/(Cost) ( 55,100) ( 41,216) ( 27,332) ( 13,448) 436 * Prices exclude VAT 1 Costs in years 3 5 are subject to CPI/RPI 5. Timescales and Procurement 5.1 The hosted services evaluated are available via the governments G-Cloud Framework and having established that they meet our requirements we will be able to procure the modules speedily within a structured six stage process. 5.2 This framework has not been used by Gravesham before but it is the most appropriate route to procure cloud based services of this nature as it was specifically designed for this purpose. The timescales of implementation would be such that the existing systems would be de-supported by April The G-Cloud framework has been used by a number of councils to procure this type of software with some examples of being Scarborough and Warwickshire Direct a customer services partnership comprising Warwickshire county and district councils, plus Rugby Borough Council and Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council. 6. BACKGROUND PAPERS 6.1 Anyone wishing to inspect background papers should, in the first place, be directed to Committee & Electoral Services who will make the necessary arrangements. 4

5 IMPLICATIONS APPENDIX 1 Legal Finance and Value for Money Risk Assessment Equality Impact Assessment Corporate Business Plan Crime and Disorder There are no legal implications arising from any decisions resulting from this report. The purchase of the system will be funded via the spend to save reserve as outlined in section 4. The purchase of software provided over the internet will reduce the demand on IT Service resources through reduced requirements to upgrade, backup and maintain software provided through the councils existing network setup. Further savings will be delivered through a phased programme of reviews to redesign service delivery and internal processes to ensure the potential from modern technology is maximised and the Council secures the best return on its investment. There are a number of risks related to the procurement of a single customer contact platform. The biggest single risk surrounds the provision of software on a software as a service subscription basis. This arrangement relies on a robust internet connection being in place to ensure that the software is accessible and reliable for contact centre officers and customer. The council maintains an internet connection through the Kent Public Service Network which has excellent reliability. Screening for Equality Impacts Question Answer Explanation a. Does the decision being made or recommended through this paper have potential to cause adverse impact or discriminate against different groups in the community? b. Does the decision being made or recommended through this paper make a positive contribution to promoting equality? c. What steps are you taking to mitigate, reduce, avoid or minimise the impacts identified above? No No N/A In submitting this report, the Chief Officer doing so is confirming that they have given due regard to the equality impacts of the decision being considered, as noted in the table above Improving services to customers and the results that enhanced digital services can give covers areas of focus 16; Ensuring a strong customer focus and delivering quality frontline services, 17; Managing the council s business and 18; Working to ensure that council services provide value for money and are delivered efficiently. There are no crime and disorder implications arising from this report. 5

6 APPENDIX TWO Single Contact Platform Software and Operational Benefits Software Benefits Single 24/7 contact stream for customers ( , eforms and customers services). The forms are absolutely identical in every way. Single reporting line for contact centre/website form stats Inbuilt support for mobile devices and accessibility standards myaccount facility provided - which can be expanded Workflow and tasks capabilities which can be used to process back office requests Customers can track progress of their reports The local land and property gazetteer underpins the software setup Back office closure of service requests from mobile devices - Town Team and Waste Management Potential for offline capability for staff out in the field where network connection may not always be available Face to face customer queuing system capabilities Internal processes can be enabled such as internal job applications and sickness notifications. Reduced staff time by truly enabling self-service channels through the website Customer service officers can promote self-service within their call handling processes Rationalisation of the IT infrastructure Record of information given to the customer including links to web pages, FAQs Management of all contacts within one system ( , web chat, telephone, face to face) Operational Benefits s can be processed through the software not Microsoft outlook Digital Team officers can create eforms increasing resilience in form creation No rekeying of data received online by contact centre officers Mobile working and be facilitated by back office closure software No routine upgrades of the software required be to completed in house No backups required in house No client software to be maintained by IT Services High chance of Integration with any new contact centre telephony system Integration with corporate EDMS system through online application forms for services Single common view for both customers and officers Ability to stop/start services enabling customers to start a process at home and forward it for completion by the service department e.g. application forms Potential to combine information beneficial to the authority e.g. working towards a corporate debt view 6