8. DIGITAL BY DESIGN - CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT SYSTEM REPORT OF: Contact Officer: Wards Affected: Key Decision: Report to: HEAD OF DIGITAL AND CUSTOMER SERVICES Simon Hughes, Head of Digital and Customer Services Email: simon.hughes@midsussex.gov.uk Tel: 01444 477514 All No Scrutiny Committee for Leader and Service Delivery 18 November 2015 Purpose of the Report 1. To outline the overall approach to replacing the Customer Relationship Management System (CRM) currently supplied by Lagan. The report includes details on the scope of the procurement, the approach to market for the CRM and a summary of the developing Digital Strategy. Summary 2. The Lagan CRM reaches its end of life in March 2016. A replacement CRM is required and this presents an opportunity to improve the customer experience and also provide options for services to deliver improvements in the way they work. 3. The paper proposes that a new CRM is implemented and a range of existing waste functions, for example missed bins and green waste collection, are developed and integrated with it. These functions will also provide capabilities, such as customer notifications, that can then be used across other Council systems. These will improve the customer experience for a range of services and reduce costs of Council ICT systems over time. 4. This approach of building capabilities which can then be reused by other systems underpins the Council s developing Digital Strategy. It is part of a number of measures intended to reduce the total cost of ownership of digital technology while at the same time offering flexibility for services in how digital systems are used. Recommendations 5. The Committee is requested to recommend to the Cabinet Member for Finance and Service Delivery that he: (i) (ii) Approves the overall approach to the work; Approves the procurement of licenses, development and implementation services for the new CRM and associated capabilities. Background 6. This paper sets out the key procurement issues for the Council including the specification, route to market and links to the high level digital strategy. It identifies the initial integration required with waste services, including some systems replacement. 7. The Council needs a replacement CRM with at least the current levels of integration with waste management by the time the current Lagan CRM is decommissioned. It must have the ability to work with other systems so that the Council is able to produce exemplary customer service and improve the productivity of staff.
8. The market for CRM systems has matured meaning leading products can provide a broad range of integration with other systems, for example telephones, line of business systems (those for specific services) and the web. 9. The focus of the procurement is to build capabilities, for example case recording, notifications for customers and workflow automation, that can then be reused to integrate other services. This supports the digital strategy which uses the CRM as an initial platform to help provide the tools on which development teams and development partners can build, consolidate, integrate and rationalise the majority of the Council s application portfolio. The resultant application platform can offer a common interface for services for the majority of their technology requirements. 10. With a new CRM and a roadmap to develop or procure associated capabilities, it will be far easier to automate work processes across the Council and redesign services that meet the increasing expectations of customers and businesses. This means information will be able to flow between different systems which can use data already collected. The Council will be able to design more efficient workflows, for example taking out the need for double handing information. This will provide choices for Heads of Service and Business Unit Leaders in how they wish to capture these efficiencies. For example, staff time could be freed up to focus on adding value by using their expertise rather than their time administering systems. Aligning with the Council s Digital Strategy Draft MSDC Digital Strategy 11. Procuring and developing systems should be informed by an overall strategy. Given the timeline to replace Lagan the Council s Digital Strategy is being developed in tandem with the CRM procurement. This means that some of the work needed to replace the CRM, for example being clear on how data is structured across the Council s systems, can be used to both inform and underpin the Digital Strategy. 12. Mid Sussex District Council currently operates with legacy proprietary systems. Infrastructure is maintained by CenSus ICT, a partnership between MSDC, Horsham DC and Adur and Worthing District Councils. Work has now been commissioned that will produce the partnership s medium term strategy and detailed business plan. It is highly likely that this will be based on moving to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) where possible. Procuring a CRM that will run from a public cloud will support this strategy, reducing requirements for local infrastructure and support. 13. The Council s draft strategy sets out the key principles that will support technological decisions. These are: Placing the needs of users (councillors, staff and customers) at the heart of technology choices Technology choices supporting flexibility and change Adopting technology and commercial models that support sustainable cost Adopting technology and standards that will enable a wide range of suppliers of all sizes to compete on a level playing field Making technology choices with the knowledge of developments in the wider market Maintaining trust with customers that access to information is done in a secure manner and that all communication including transfer of data is done in line with data security principles.
Work underway to develop the MSDC strategy and roadmap 14. Underpinning these principles requires changes in the Council s ICT systems and applications. For example, the way data is structured and shared between systems (data architecture) needs to be planned across the Council, informed by information governance and customer needs. Projects are both planned and underway to inform the strategy and these include: Reviewing the technical infrastructure provided by CenSus ICT including options for reducing costs Reviewing applications to provide options to simplify and rationalise capabilities Appraising options to improve the reliability and reduce costs of telephony services. 15. These projects will underpin a strategy for CenSus ICT and the Council s Digital Strategy. They will identify the business case including roadmap and detailed costings to ensure ICT systems and infrastructure align with business need. This will facilitate better customer service and enable services to be flexible and adapt to changes in demand and expectations. 16. There are also a number of projects underway to improve the customer experience and the systems available to Councillors and staff. These include: Improving the responsive design of the website and e-forms to support more effective access for customers Social media scanning to pick up and respond to customer queries Simplifying e-forms to reduce completion times for customer service staff Improving public and secure Wi-Fi to allow more flexible working on campus and reduce need for remote access tokens while using Wi-Fi on site Microsoft Office 365 combined with a refreshed approach to information governance will improve remote access to emails and MS Office tools. 17. Although the Council will have a single customer platform at its heart, the overall Digital Strategy will be designed to avoid long term lock-in to single suppliers. There will be a small number of other cloud-based platforms and web applications that will complement the customer platform. This will ensure that the Council can continue to exploit emerging products and services that enhance customer service and efficiency. The selected platforms will be typified by the large community of companies and individuals that build add-on and enhanced products and services on top of them. For example, at one end of the spectrum if the Council wants to survey its customers on a particular issue it might decide to download a customer survey application from the CRM ecosystem. Equally, if the Council requires an application to support more complex and Local Government specific activity it may decide to develop that capability on the platform with other partners. 18. As long as it is cost effective customers will expect the Council to adopt modern technology to deliver better services. They will also expect the Council to capture, use and store their data with care, ensuring that their identity, sensitive information and financial details are secure and only used for appropriate purposes. 19. The Digital Strategy will be underpinned by a risk-based approach to the management of data. It will select technologies that conform to globally recognised accreditation standards such as SAS70 Type ii and ISO27001. For especially sensitive data the Council will adopt tools that comply with or are accredited to Government security classifications.
20. A substantial amount of the information and data held by the Council is neither personal nor personally sensitive in nature. Data security concerns will be appropriately managed but will not be an excuse for technology choices that offer poor customer and user experience or that are excessively expensive. The approach to data security will be covered in a refreshed Information Governance Strategy. CRM Key Issues 21. The Lagan CRM is used in the contact centre for recording customer telephone contacts. It has limited integration with other systems in use across the Council. For example, for customer services staff to access Planning and Building Control systems, they must log on to separate systems, switching between them and therefore delaying responses to customers. The only service area with the Council also using the Lagan CRM is waste. The extent of this integration, the degree to which systems are automated and digital from end to end, is extremely limited. This means that calls from customers take longer than needed to resolve as staff must switch between systems and re-enter data. This is both inefficient and is a risk for data quality. 22. The majority of processes operate either completely or partially outside the CRM. Over time some data double entry has been eliminated by using e-forms, however, these do not provide two-way communication between the CRM and other systems. For example, address details do not transfer from one system to another and therefore a customer services officer needs to enter the same details on more than one form during one call. 23. The Lagan CRM has no Computer Telephony Integration (CTI). This technology, a functionality of our telephone exchange technology, is not integrated with Lagan. It provides customer contact staff with the telephone number of the caller and the CRM is able to bring up outstanding queries and the customer s details. The absence of this causes considerable delay when answering and dealing with calls as staff need to ask a number of questions to bring up customer records or interrogate other systems to respond to the customer. 24. The Refuse Rounds Maintenance System (RRMS) is used to maintain details of the refuse rounds used by SERCO for daily collections and to drive the 'check my collection' functionality on the MSDC website. The system is also used to drive a look up function within LAGAN that allows call centre staff to identify the details of callers waste collections. Currently this information sits on a range of servers and the software providing this functionality is now unsupported. 25. The large number of processes and procedures handled using e-forms, access databases and spreadsheets also present a level of insecurity both from a data management and reporting perspective. Having data stored in this way, inaccessible by all to an editable state and not backed up for Disaster Recovery purposes presents a significant risk. It also means that data is not reused by other systems potentially reducing data quality and meaning many customer contacts take additional time to resolve. 26. Finally, the Lagan CRM provides limited reporting outputs on which to base business decisions. It is difficult to identify calls where multiple customer enquiries have been resolved or to track the progress of activity outside the Lagan system. This means clear data cannot be provided to services indicating the nature and range of customer contacts. This data can then be used to redesign services to improve the customer experience.
Procurement 27. The CRM procurement consists of the following elements: Licencing for the CRM purchased directly by the Council Implementation of CRM, associated data architecture and integration with the telephony services. For example, Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) which means the call triggers the CRM to bring up callers details and any outstanding or common service queries Development/Implementation of capabilities providing both customer service staff and the waste team with at least existing capabilities. These can be deployed through an existing application, built, or deployed on a new low code platform delivering the waste functionality and CRM wide capabilities. These capabilities could include, for example, customer notifications that can be reused for other services therefore reducing the cost of application development across the Council and critically providing customers with an improved experience. Adherence, where possible, to the Local Waste Service Standards Project as a means of maintaining adaptability Training for Customer Service staff and systems administrators in the use and development of the CRM. This will include training power users who are able to deliver training and support staff after implementation has been completed. 28. In early 2015 Methods Digital completed an initial investigation into replacing the CRM. This recommended replacing the CRM with a suitable technology that offers: Open APIs (these allow applications to share data and functionality) A marketplace for associated applications that are well developed in public services Software as a Service (SaaS) based to reduce the costs of infrastructure and facilitate a move to supporting the overall move to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Mobility, Flexibility and Ease Low Code Option. 29. Methods also identified key capabilities for a replacement CRM and these, alongside the points above will be included in the specifications for the CRM and development of applications. More detail is available in the Appendices. 30. The Council will procure these services through a mini competition using the G-Cloud framework section covering SaaS offerings. The framework offers the opportunity for direct award or further competition depending on the requirements. Soft Market Testing 31. Soft market testing had been completed with a variety of suppliers. Maintenance of SaaS based CRM is included in the licensing and reporting and e-forms equivalents are included out of the box. To further reduce costs, the as is processes within the waste service have been mapped and the Council is developing a first iteration of the to be business processes. Suppliers will be presented with these during the procurement and this will assist in both in evaluating proposals and reducing the costs and the time of implementation.
Timeline 32. Suppliers will be expected to use an agile development approach working in 'sprints' which are typically two week cycles for a four to six-person team. This enables suppliers to deliver quickly and in collaboration with the Council. Suppliers have indicated that initial requirements for waste could be delivered in one to three sprints, subject to further discussions and to the extent of additional capabilities developed. 33. Procurement is recommended to commence in the coming months with work starting in late January or early February. Development licences can be available at the point of procurement. This would allow time, including contingency for a go live date well before the end of March 2016. Financial Implications 34. There are no financial implications of this report. 35. A fund for a new way of ICT working was agreed in the Corporate Plan and Budget at Council on 25 February 2015. An element of this budget will be used to fund the implementation of the CRM and associated development costs. Both the licences and the implementation and development services will be procured using the Government s G Cloud procurement framework. A mini competition for the development and implementation will ensure the best market rate and quality for the services needed. It is important to note that while the cost of software capabilities will be met through this procurement, the capabilities once in place can be used across a variety of Council services. Licencing and Support Costs 36. The Lagan CRM started as part of the Better Together programme and was wholly funded by IESE. Until 2013/14 the Lagan product and its support and development was funded almost entirely by central Government funding, with each Council contributing only 10,000 per annum to support the work. Since this date the budget for Lagan has been calculated as: Item Total Lagan Annual maintenance 33.0k Business Objects annual maintenance 7.0k Top level e-forms annual maintenance 16.5k total 56.5k 37. These exclude costs for the server at West Sussex County Council, where the Lagan system sits, which is not charged. Additional costs for the RRMS, server space and server support are within the CenSus ICT contract costs. 38. Market testing has indicated that the costs of like for like licensing for the new CRM, (both full and back office) will be lower than existing costs. Initial discussions with vendors have indicated that new licencing models are being proposed through the next iteration of the G-Cloud procurement framework and savings on this may be achieved at the point of purchase. These will be directly purchased by the Council at the start of the CRM implementation to enable development activity to take place. While there will be an overlap with existing Lagan CRM licences this cost is marginal and within budgets.
39. Management information capability is built into the new breed of CRM and can be configured easily. It is not anticipated that licences will be required for Business Objects. 40. Top level e-forms will be continued and its use reviewed as the Council s digital strategy is implemented. 41. Server costs, for example space and maintenance, will be included in the licencing costs of the new CRM. This will reduce reliance for on-site servers and reduce the need for CenSus ICT to support server infrastructure. Implementation of CRM and development of capabilities 42. Day rates are included within the G-Cloud framework and the Council will expect a blended day rate from suppliers. Soft market testing with suppliers has indicated that as part of the procurement process they will discuss the best way to deliver what is required and provide detailed costs against this. This will provide the Council with the most up to date market solutions. As detailed earlier, the initial requirements could be delivered in one to three sprints and typically the blended day rates for each sprint is between 25 and 35k depending on the skill mix required. The skills mix is adjusted according to the levels of integration and the sophistication of the proposed solution. 43. Where suppliers have already developed capabilities that provide a waste management solution a per user per monthly licence fee plus services may be required. This is likely to include implementation, customisation and training and would be based on the specification and day rates. This would reduce the development costs but may not meet the Council s needs. The best approach will be discussed with suppliers as part of the procurement process using the principles of the developing Digital Strategy. Risk Management Implications Procurement 44. Soft market testing has confirmed the availability of a range of suppliers with both the technical skills and capacity to deliver the desired solutions. 45. Procurement using the existing Government G-Cloud framework considerably shortens the procurement timeline and ensures many of the risks are managed. Implementation 46. The low level of integration with existing systems reduces the risks associated with system development and implementation. Many of the features required are out of the box and require minimal configuration. Work has also been completed with the suppliers of the telephony system to ensure compatibility with a range of CRMs. Many suppliers will use applications so that Council staff, for example the customer services and waste teams, can see exactly what is being worked on at any point in time. This helps to ensure user needs are met and reduces significantly the financial and development risks. Data migration 47. It is not expected that there will be any requirement for large scale data migration from the Lagan CRM system or existing waste systems. The project is expected to be principally greenfield which means data will not need to be repopulated in the new CRM. There will be some need for a data extraction tool to capture information on waste rounds and outstanding customer contacts.
48. CenSus ICT will be involved in the overall governance of the project through the established Council ICT Board. Any capacity required will be programmed into work schedules and if required additional resources can be sourced through the successful suppliers. Equality and Customer Service Implications 49. The new CRM will comply with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 and work with screen readers and speech recognition software. Other Material Implications Security CRM 50. Modern CRM systems are built with security to protect data and applications. They also allow security schemes to be tailored to the structure and needs of the organisation. 51. Market leaders provide platform encryption ensuring data is secure while also preserving critical platform functionality. Data can be selected for encryption at rest using an advanced key derivation system. It can also be protected at a granular level to comply with privacy policies, regulatory requirements, and contractual obligations for handling private data. These security levels will be agreed prior to implementation and ensure compliance with the requirements of PSN. G-Cloud Security Assertions 52. All suppliers wishing to include their cloud service offerings within the Government s Digital Marketplace are mandated to complete security assertions based on the Government s Communications-Electronics Security Group (CESG) Cloud Security Principles. As a minimum the Council will expect an independent validation of assertion. This is likely to be via a qualified individual or organisation. Examples include audits by respected audit companies and the use of a CESG Certified Professional (CCP) Accreditor. Safe Harbour 53. A recent judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) has challenged the US Safe Harbor scheme. This judgement challenged the formal Decision of the European Commission recognising that Safe Harbor gave businesses an assurance that if they transferred personal data to members in the US, they would satisfy the legal requirement for personal data transferred outside the EU to be adequately protected. This assurance has now been removed. 54. The judgment did not strike down Safe Harbor itself, but focused on the Commission Decision that had given the assurance to businesses. This means there is still a measure of protection for personal data transferred under the scheme. 55. Recent advice from the Information Commissioner states that the existing Commission Decisions on the adequacy of particular countries and on standard contractual clauses do still stand, and can be relied on by businesses, certainly for the time being. Appendices Appendix A - High-level requirements for the new CRM Appendix B - Requirements for technologies and capabilities
Background Papers None.
APPENDIX A HIGH LEVEL REQUIREMENTS FOR THE NEW CRM In early 2015 Methods Digital completed an initial investigation into replacing the CRM. This recommended replacing the CRM with a suitable technology that offers: Open Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) An API is a software intermediary that makes it possible for applications to interact with each other and share data. Often they will enable functionality in one application to work with another application. Open APIs are published on the Internet and shared freely. A software company, for example might publish a series of APIs to encourage third-party developers to be innovative and develop new ways to use the software product. Software as a Service Public cloud-based, software as a service (SaaS) products can be securely accessed through a browser at any time and at any location (subject to internet connection). Applications are usually upgraded with no support or professional services required from the purchaser. Market leading products are used by organisations around the world and therefore are kept up to date with wider technology developments. Typically, this reduces the total costs of ownership as on site servers are not needed to support the product. Application eco-system The CRM platform will need to have an eco-system of SaaS apps: both those built on low code, and that available elsewhere with off-the-shelf deep integration. This means the Council will be able to acquire the skilled resource (either in-house or in partnership with suppliers) needed to sustain the CRM/platform over the coming years. This has proved problematic with the Lagan system and meant that integrating workflows within services has been an issue. Low Code Option Methods Digital proposed developing a flexible and agile linked development platform that connects with the CRM. This is known as a 'low code platform' and would allow applications to be developed rapidly with a minimum of coding. These platforms tend to use visual models, similar to business processes mapping, and can bring the business and IT closer together because applications can be developed more quickly and collaboratively. This capability provides the option for the Council to build a small team on site who could use the platform to develop associated applications that integrate with the CRM. As the Digital Strategy roadmap is developed the Council can then consider the most appropriate direction to take in acquiring applications. It may choose to go to market as the initial preference as applications move from custom build to commodity (and therefore utility) as the market matures and opportunities arise to replace legacy systems, or to build applications where it is competitive and efficient to do so.
APPENDIX B REQUIREMENT FOR TECHNOLOGIES AND CAPABILITIES Initial technologies and capabilities will include Enterprise grade customer relationship management (CRM) capability to manage customer enquiries across multiple channels Options for a low code platform that will handle service processes and transactions, and provide back office capabilities Options for additional capabilities which will support productivity and efficient working e.g. document management, collaboration or e-signatures Other bolt-on capabilities which may be needed (or which may be more cost effective than integrating existing applications) e.g. modern payments engine Design and establish technical architecture Documentation which sets out how the chosen platform will work together, alongside other technology Identifying the data the platform will use, where it will come from, what will become the master data and how integrity will be maintained Establish security model and disaster recovery Agree technical governance e.g. change control, release management, etc. Ongoing technical design and architecture Ensuring the continued link between the CRM, low code platform (if chosen) and digital products Identifying and integrating data required for platform products e.g. the Rounds Database Benefits Technical architecture agreed and documented Architecture aligned to meet the digital strategy Agree priority services within waste management to deliver on to platform CRM Data migration Mid Sussex does not currently use a core CRM system so the new CRM will be largely greenfield with a limited amount of data migration for outstanding customer records. The supplier will need to provide a format for the data to be loaded into the new platform. If a more complex migration is required, the supplier will work with the Council to identify a suitable Extract, Transform and Load (ELT) tool to migrate the data. Council Information Asset owners will remain responsible for the quality of data migrated to the Platform. Waste management data The supplier will provide a format for the data to be loaded into the new platform. If a more complex migration is required, the supplier will work with the Council to identify a suitable ELT tool to migrate the data. Council Information Asset Owners will remain responsible for the quality of data migrated to the Platform.