Like local authorities across the country, Northumberland’s Castle Morpeth Borough Council and Alnwick District Council are always on the lookout for ways to improve the cost effectiveness of their services. In a effort to give their residents better value for money, the councils decided in late 2006 to implement a new customer relationship management (CRM) system across the two boroughs. Deployment of the system began in February and it has already drastically reduced the two councils’ running costs while providing a more transparent management process.

The two councils, which serve neighbouring communities to the north of Newcastle Upon Tyne, operate a shared ICT team that supports 600 users across six sites.

The arrangement has worked well, but recently it became apparent that there was room for efficiency improvements in the system according to Mike Kenworthy, ICT partnership manager.

“When I came here from Sunderland council in 2006, there was a lot to look at in terms of the CRM system’s efficiency and performance. We were using a CRM system from Northgate Information Solutions, but it was expensive to run and the users hated it; it slowed them down rather than speeding them up,” he said.

As a first step to finding a replacement CRM package, the ICT team thoroughly analysed the boroughs’ requirements. Residents, council staff and businesses were all asked about what they wanted and expected from a CRM system. In the meantime, Kenworthy looked into the types of solution that had been deployed by other councils.

“What we were looking for was a system that could support workflow tracking, give customers more channels to access their information, and integrate with the council’s mobile working staff,” said Kenworthy.

The ICT team first heard about Microsoft’s Dynamics CRM suite when representatives from the software firm paid a routine visit to discuss the councils’ current licensing agreements for products such as SQL Server.

“By the time Microsoft came knocking we knew we could not continue with our original system, so we arranged a CRM product demonstration with Microsoft and IT consultancy Optevia in order to get buy-in from the entire department,” said Kenworthy.

The councils were pleased to discover that the new system would lead to substantial savings from the outset, according to Kenworthy.

“With the previous system, we paid £250,000 for implementation and then spent £30,000 on maintenance. Optevia charged £50,000 for the full implementation and we also saved massively on maintenance. As part of the enterprise agreement, we pay Microsoft £200 a year,” he explained.

Optevia’s wealth of experience in delivering CRM solutions for public sector organisations helped the deployment to go smoothly, Kenworthy said. Rather than starting from scratch, the councils were able to make use of Optevia’s Local Government Template, featuring a range of pre-built business processes, integrations and workflows. Optevia also introduced specific customisations to suit Castle Morpeth and Alnwick Councils as it went along.

The first part of the implementation based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM went live in February 2008 and currently supports 50 per cent of the councils’ customer interactions.

At Castle Morpeth Borough Council, the services covered include forms handling and distribution, general enquiries, household waste management, bulky item collection, pest control, planning control and licensing of taxis.

Alnwick District Council chose different areas for the first phase of its rollout, covering such things as housing repairs, tourism processes, job applications, pest control and management of wheelie bins.

Under the councils’ shared service agreement, all staff use the same CRM system, but each borough’s staff can only access data pertaining to their own residents.
One notable benefit of the new system compared with the old is increased transparency, according to Kenworthy.

“The workflow tracking allows us to monitor back-office work and how effectively staff process requests,” he said. “From the customer’s perspective, it gives them increased trust in the system as well.”

Another benefit of the new system is that it ensures the validity of data. “The trouble with the old database was that once council staff entered a request, we couldn’t always retrieve it,” Kenworthy said.

The new CRM system is integrated with the web, so staff can deal with customers online. “There are so many things council residents can now do online. For example, they can request their washing machine to be taken away. We live in a rural area, and they either had to come in or phone in before,” explained Kenworthy.

Staff cuts are a common outcome when systems that automate manual processes are deployed, but Kenworthy said there had been no job losses in the ICT department. “It just means that customers who ring in get increased efficiency because there are more staff available to answer the phones,” he said.

The CRM system is also supporting the councils’ new mobile working strategy. “Microsoft CRM Mobile is being piloted in refuse collection, whereby staff can log people’s requests there and then, when they are out in the field,” Kenworthy said.
The CRM deployment also presented the councils with an opportunity to explore the benefits of virtualisation.

“Communication rooms need a lot of power and efficiency, so before we rolled out the Microsoft CRM solution, we thought it would be the right opportunity to introduce virtual servers and desktops to further reduce costs and our carbon footprint,” explained Kenworthy. Bringing in virtual desktops would complement the council’s teleworking agenda, he said.

The council wanted to avoid introducing a lot of additional servers to run the new CRM application, and Dell seemed to offer the best virtual solution, Kenworthy said. Dell also worked with Optevia to ensure compatibility with the new CRM system.
The CRM system runs on VMware infrastructure, using three Dell PowerEdge 2950 servers linked to an EMC storage area network (SAN).

The ICT department plans to integrate Microsoft Dynamics CRM with back-office systems such as planning, revenues and benefits, and with its Comino document management system. Microsoft CRM Mobile will also be rolled out across other departments.