ITnet rides in on Hackney carriage

Hackney Council has put its z70 million revenues and benefits contract in the hands of ITnet in what is thought to be the largest local government outsourcing contract this year.

What made the difference, the council said, was ITnet's call centre proposal based on Vectus Customer Case Management. Sarah Ebanja, the Council's Executive Director, said: "ITnet will establish an advanced call centre for the revenues and benefits department. The call centre will be supported by a radical approach to document management, using a case-oriented systems.

This will enable staff to deal with enquiries across all aspects of revenues and benefits for an individual customer, basically putting an end to 'telephone shunt' and provide a better service to the public."

The company supplying the Customer Case Management software is Hatton Blue. ITnet built a working prototype during the evaluation process to demonstrate how it would tackle the question. Hatton Blue Managing Director, Paul Ratcliff, said: "This gave ITnet an edge over the competition."

Rod Watts, Director of ITnet, said: "Customer case management is relatively new but already it has proved its ability to differentiate our service."