Council expects IT initiatives to save £34m

Surrey County Council has overhauled its IT systems to cut costs and cope with increasing public service expectations.

The council estimates its costs will rise by £50m a year over the next two years, while central government funding is set to fall by £30 to £40m.

Surrey has implemented numerous IT schemes intended to generate savings of £34m over the next 10 years.

‘We have taken a long hard look at the key systems the council needs to maintain and the expertise needed to keep them running,’ said Nick Roberts, the council’s information, management and technology corporate business partner.

Surrey has used IT to route more outside enquiries through its call centre, which it plans to further extend.

‘The centre has moved from about 34 seats to more than 100, and we have supported it with CRM systems, call logging and integration with other computer systems,’ said Roberts.

Other projects include the implementation of an SAP system to handle all internal transactions. An IBM hosted system will handle the council’s finances.

‘We are also establishing a shared services centre to consolidate all our internal transactional processing into a single team,’ said Roberts.