Customer Success

‘Milestone’ achievement using a Civica shared service model

Earlier this year Thanet and Dover District Councils announced their intention to implement a Civica OPENRevenues shared service model. This is potentially the first stage of a wider project to form an East Kent shared service solution.

Requirement for ‘immediate savings’
The decision to investigate a shared service solution came in response to the challenges being faced by several authorities in the region following the drive towards greater efficiencies, reduced costs and improved services.

The first group of shared services will include ICT, revenues and benefits and a customer service contact centre. Although the larger project is not scheduled for delivery until 2011, to allow them to benefit from ‘immediate savings’, Thanet and Dover Councils decided to switch to a merged system as quickly as possible. One of the key objectives for the project is to produce a minimum 10 per cent saving within a two year timescale without impacting on service delivery. Early into the project initial cost reductions and efficiencies have already been identified mainly through single software updates and single system back-ups – the model also allows for the option of multiple or single user sites.

Mark Emery of Thanet District Council said, “This first real shared service with a single server environment and a shared database represents a milestone for our two authorities. Positive can-do attitudes and personal attention have been crucial in successfully delivering the project.”

OPENRevenues – originally designed for shared applications
Due to the high level of standardised transactional processing and legislative-driven work, many authorities considering a shared services collaboration see IT innovation and automation in their revenues and benefits departments as an ideal catalyst for service delivery transformation.

This potential to harmonise business processes was one reason why the original OPENRevenues software was designed to support the concept of collaborative working between different organisations, and merging multiple systems into one application. The unique single person and place database extends across all the authorities in the partnership, giving users a single view of each customer contact regardless of the council it relates to or where the individual user is based.

However, each authority retains its unique characteristics such as documents, parameters, and schemes within the system, and data integrity is maintained so to comply easily with Government returns. The flexibility of the system also simplifies the process of adding new partners to a collaboration, and increases the potential efficiency gains for each member of the scheme.

The early achievements with Thanet and Dover have helped further develop our expertise in the growing area of shared services. If you’d like to discuss this project in greater detail, or would like an initial meeting regarding your own shared or managed service solution, please contact our team by calling 01635 264200 or email openrevenues@civica.co.uk