Shared benefits - Teesdale and Wear Valley Shared Services increase productivity and drive efficiencies with solution from IBS OPENSystems

Published by Paul S for Citigate Dewe Rogerson in Local Government

Background
Wear Valley and Teesdale are two of seven local councils within the County of Durham. A partnership was formed between Teesdale District Council and Wear Valley District Council to administer Housing and Council Tax Benefit. The partnership went live in January 2007. The partnership was based on a lead authority model with Wear Valley as the lead authority.

The merged Benefits department was based at Wear Valley with the primary objective to offer over 10,000 customers across both districts, services relating to Housing and Council Tax benefit assessment and related services.

Challenge
Offering a shared service across two councils can be extremely complex.
Both Wear Valley and Teesdale had been using IBS OPENRevenues for a number of years. At the start of partnership negotiations in October 2005, Wear Valley were in the process of implementing a DIP and workflow solution. It was agreed that Teesdale be included within this implementation.

Maintaining separate systems would have been time consuming and unwieldy for the user negating some of the efficiency gains derived as a result of the merger. Therefore Wear Valley and Teesdale decided to adopt one solution to be deployed across the both the partnership Benefits service and also the Revenues services at both authorities.

Solution
After careful consideration, a decision was taken to implement OPENWorkflow and IBS Document Image Processing (DIP) across both councils. Ann Baker Revenues & Benefits Manger, Wear Valley District Council comments:
Wear Valley had successfully used IBS Systems for a number of years, so I was confident that that deploying IBS OPENWorkflow and DIP was the best way forward.

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. Benefit forms, letters and general correspondence are scanned to create an electronic image which is saved on a central database. OPENWorkflow then prioritises and routes documents to the relevant officers to action and in some instances, can automatically process items. 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.

IBS OPENRevenues, and OPENWorkflow is used by 69 members of staff from Wear Valley and Teesdale councils. By using IBS solutions in the Revenues and Benefits department, Wear Valley and Teesdale hope to improve customer service levels with quicker processing times.

Ann Baker continues:
IBS OPENworkflow offered considerable scope for efficiency gains because it integrates fully with OPENRevenues. This allows all information on a customer file to be accessed on one screen. The system ensures that with over 2,500 new claims and changes in circumstances each month, there is little requirement for manual data entry.

Outcome
The conversion of data onto the IBS DIP system for Wear Valley and Teesdales newly integrated Benefits services, was very efficient, said Ann Baker.

Data conversion to the new system happened overnight. There was very little downtime. Once staff are fully versed with the system, I expect to see some strong efficiency results.