CABINET 9 th February 2006 Report of the Director of Partnerships and Customer Services ITEM 11 CRM DEVELOPMENT Purpose of the Report To seek approval to the replacement for the Council s Customer Relationship Management system. Recommendation(s) 1. That approval is given in principle to the procurement of a replacement Customer Relationship Management system, with delivery of this initiative overseen by a Project Board. 2. That a sum of 250,000 is earmarked in the IEG provision in the Capital Programme 2006/7 to support this project. Reason(s) 1. To the procurement process to proceed. 2. To secure the resources anticipated. Policy Context The Council is committed to improving services to customers using new and innovative technologies where supported by a business case and having regard to the requirements of central government. Background The Government has mandated local authorities to achieve a range of priority outcomes for electronic delivery of local authority services and information. Of particular concern at present are the outcomes associated with the development of the Council s customer relationship management arrangements (CRM). CRM is about managing customer's interaction with the council - using a database, which holds customer's records, to deliver services across different channels, and enabling joined-up and automated service delivery. The pilot deployment of crm for housing services and its subsequent extension to cleansing services have demonstrated the value and potential of crm technology in improving services to the public. Attached at Appendix A is a chart showing the call volumes experienced in the Contact Centre, the principal users of the current crm system. It is clear that without that arrangement supported by crm the Council s ability to handle routine calls, let alone the call volumes at the peak of the refuse/recycling roll out, would have been seriously compromised.
In November it was reported that while the original Orchard CRM system had been deployed largely successfully for housing and cleansing services, there remain significant areas of further development to enable the effective roll out CRM to other service areas. During the autumn a process of evaluating the Council s crm needs has been underway, informed by the following IEG Priority Outcomes: R27 - Systems in place to ensure effective and consistent customer relationship management across access channels and to provide a 'first time fix' for citizen and business enquiries, i.e. using a common database, which holds customer's records, to deliver services across different channels, and enabling joined-up and automated service delivery. R28 - All email and web form acknowledgements to include unique reference number allocated to allow tracking of enquiry and service response R29-100% of email enquiries from the public responded to within one working day, with documented corporate performance standards for both email acknowledgements and service replies G8 - Establishment of a single business account (i.e. a cross-departmental account run by the local authority whereby businesses are allocated a unique identifier that can be stored and managed via a corporate CRM account facility supporting faceto-face, website and contact centre transactions). G24 - Integration of customer relationship management systems with back office activity through use of enabling technology such as Workflow to create complete automation of business process management. CRM is at core of the future of the Council s operations as it is the technology that will underpin all the Council s face to face, telephone/sms and e-mail/web transactions (as well as enabling mobile working). While this is not simply about the technology, the right technology is key to delivering a vision of improved customer service across the organisation. When service users contact the Council they expect staff to have access to comprehensive, accurate and up to date information about them and their interactions with the Council (and potentially with associated agencies). Central to the future use of crm within the Council is its ability to: accept enquiries from the widest range of access channels, match and authenticate customer details provide a single view of case histories so that all those involved in a process have the same up to date information on the status of each transaction; and dynamically integrates with the key back office systems. The diagram attached as Appendix B provides an overview of the proposed crm architecture.
A functional specification has been prepared to identify the Council s requirements for crm in the future and this reflects the fact that effective systems integration is a significant challenge facing the Council. Comparison of the current crm system against that specification and investigations of leading public sector crm solutions, confirm that the current system will not meet the Council s requirements in terms of functionality or performance. In addition extension of the current solution to other services will require the Council to incur costs through purchase of additional licences (estimated at 100,000) and by engaging the supplier in consultancy to support the deployment. Therefore, while the Orchard system has enabled the Council to deploy crm for housing and cleansing services and achieve service delivery improvements in those areas, the recommendation is that the Council now procures a replacement system which will meet its current and future functional and performance requirements. This procurement will take fully into account proposals to replace the Housing Management System but also the need to integrate with back office systems not currently linked to the crm. The alternative would be to continue to operate the existing solution for housing and cleansing services and this can be done for a limited period. However, that will inhibit the ability of the Council to improve services to the public through more effective integration of key back office systems, in particular the recognised priority need for improvement to the whole housing repairs and maintenance process. Initial investigations with two of the market leaders in local authority crm solutions indicates that the cost of purchase and deployment would be in the region of 250,000 with annual revenue costs of approximately 35,000. The IEG capital programme already contains a provision of 64,400 for purchase of corporate licences for the existing crm system (to support its corporate roll out) and 48,600 could be released from existing capital allocations for web development because some of the costs of that project would be covered in the purchase of a new crm solution. In effect it is proposed that the cost of crm replacement is funded through the IEG monies in the capital programme in 2006/7. The current crm system incurs revenue costs of 20,000 per annum. The funding implications for this proposal are included in the separate report to this meeting on E-Government Capital Investment. This proposed procurement is not included in the current years approved Procurement Plan but will be included in next years Plan when the main procurement activity will fall. Key Decision: Background Papers: Yes n/a Officer(s) to Contact: Steve Phipps 01509 634605 steve.phipps@charnwood.gov.uk
Appendix A Contact Centre Calls Received 2004/5 Number of calls 60,000 50,000 40,000 30,000 20,000 10,000 0 Cleansing Housing Total APR MAY JUN JUL AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC JAN FEB MAR Month
Annexe B Overview of Components of CBC CRM System Customer Multiple Acess Channels Face to Face Telephone Web Mobile Other Customer Database Customer Management Function Property Database Workflow Functionality Integration layer External Links Police, NHS Revenue & Benefits Housing Leisure Library Planning Social Services Other Applications