South Gloucestershire Council has completed a major overhaul of its IT systems in order to improve its front line street and highways services.
The project has seen the introduction of mobile technology to its front line services, as well as a replacement CRM system in the contact centre and website enhancements that allow local residents to directly report street level service requests relating to potholes, fly tipping, graffiti, abandoned vehicles etc.
The introduction of workforce management software that schedules jobs to field based crews and allows them to receive and complete them on mobile devices, has led to a 20% increase in productivity for the service, with the average crew now completing around 15 jobs a day compared to the previous average of 11.
South Gloucestershire Council’s street scene and highways department has also seen an improvement in customer service with the average service response times dropping from seven to three days.
Investment in mobile working technology was not taken lightly by the council and indeed has proved challenging at times to implement. But the council has quickly seen a return on their investment with operational costs for running the department reducing by over £500,000 a year, which in conjunction with the increased customer service and workforce productivity, is seen as a major triumph for the council.
The investment was one of a number of measures taken as part of the council’s recent transformation programme which aimed to deliver council-wide savings of approximately £45m by 2014/15, through efficiencies including the adoption of new technologies and ways of working.
One of the key tenets of the service transformation has been to reduce the number of manual processes in the council department, and to automate them where possible. The new mobile working technology that has been implemented with software pro- vider Kirona, has enabled this approach by creating a single chain of communication between the office and field workforce, as well as integration with other aspects of the council’s IT infrastructure such as its CRM and website. As such, not only are resident service requests created in the contact centre and distributed to the field workforce in real-time, it also means that council management and indeed the council’s residents can get real-time updates about the work being completed.
Mark King, head of streetcare at the council commented: ‘The Job Manager software provided by Kirona enables us to directly allocate works instructions to active gangs on the ground, reducing the need for inspection and in turn reducing lost time and paper work.
‘The system is integrated through to the council’s front office systems which enables call centre staff to see where jobs are in the process allowing them to give informed responses to repeat calls which in itself has saved repeat visits by busy inspection teams. This is also being rolled out to the council web site allowing the same information to be available to residents and users of the services that the council undertake.’
One of the most surprising outcomes of the project is that of the mobile workforce’s adoption of the software. As Allan Wornes, a South Gloucestershire Council ICT developer who worked on the project commented: ‘Getting the right device for the field workers is also not only important from a technology perspective but also in achieving user acceptance.
'Giving field workers a good quality device is worth 100 hours of training. This showed our staff that we were investing in them and brought them onboard with what their managers wished to achieve.’
The result of the project has been a better council service for all involved; staff, manager and customers. The next step for the council is to now look where it can expand the use of the technology to beyond their existing street and highways service.
