Reaping the Benefits - Stroud District Council streamlines Revenues and Benefits with OPENWorkflow from IBS OPENSystems to increase productivity and efficiency

Background
Stroud District Council is a rural district with 55 parishes and a population of 110,000. The Council is responsible for the upkeep of 48,000 residential homes and 3,700 businesses.

In 1995, Stroud District Council was one of the first Local Authorities in the UK to use Document Image Processing (DIP) and workflow in its Revenues and Benefits department and was at the forefront of paperless Council departments.

Challenge
Stroud District Council’s Revenues and Benefits department had developed and supported its own DIP and Workflow system. However, to improve benefit administration and performance, and to meet the efficiency demands of the Gershon Review and other agendas, the Council needed to further improve its workflow. Following a review of suppliers, Stroud District Council chose IBS OPENSystems to develop their new workflow and DIP.

Solution
IBS OPENWorkflow and DIP solutions were introduced to improve efficiency, accuracy and productivity, and to give staff the means to deliver a quick
and reliable service. OPENWorkflow controls the work staff carry out and its level of priority. Council tax forms, housing benefit letters and general correspondence are scanned to create an electronic image and saved on a central database. OPENWorkflow then prioritises and routes documents to the relevant Council officers to action. Developed with the user in mind, OPENWorkflow allows staff to link and exchange data with standard desktop applications. Total integration gives staff with correct security levels, the choice to view and process information across an entire database.
The 12-month project, started in May 2005, had four main stages. This was increased to five after the Council secured Government funding from the Department for Work and Pensions - under its performance standards fund programme - to improve benefit administration and performance.
The first stage replaced work item monitoring and queue maintenance screens to improve on-line management information and queue analysis. This offered instant queue and work item analysis and included a ‘drag and drop’ method for moving work items or groups of work items.
Phase two, completed in August 2005, centred on batch processing and automated work item creation. Work items can now be created directly from certain batch jobs. For example, work items can be automatically created for particular exceptions or errors on reports and immediately sent to the prescribed work queue for processing.
The next stage allowed all images in a predefined position on the screen to be viewed - this improved the way case documents were displayed.
Stage four improved security and reporting. A filter was introduced so sensitive or private information was protected from staff that referenced or searched information.
The final phase provided scanning and general improvements. This made significant changes to the on-line scanning to allow bar code separators - enabling batch scanning - with image manipulation. This speeds up on-line scanning and enhanced images.
Simon Killen, Project Manager, Stroud District Council said working in partnership with IBS was easy at all stages of the project and all key milestones were delivered on time.
Outcome
“We have significantly increased efficiency and value to our customers, using OPENWorkflow from IBS OPENSystems”, said Anne McKenzie, Head of Revenue and Benefit Services, Stroud District Council.
“Everything we do is focused on how to improve our service from the customers’ perspective, making sure that they receive the right benefit in the shortest possible time. Our streamlined services using OPENRevenues allow us to use experienced staff to deal with our customers face-to-face.
Future plans
Anne McKenzie continues: “We are pleased with how our relationship has progressed with IBS OPENSystems. We agreed the areas for development, and all five stages of the project were delivered on time and to budget.
“Now the contract is complete, we are looking to improve the way we use the system. Management reports provided by the new system, allow us to choose different performance measures rather than just those from the Government’s ‘Best Value Performance Indicators’ (BVPI), as national comparators.”
BVPI are traditionally used to measure the time taken to process a benefit claim. OPENRevenues will allow Stroud District Council to gain more information that will help the Council plan their workflow better. Stroud District Council is now looking at ways in which OPENRevenues can use the additional information to measure their service from a customer’s perspective.