Harrow builds one-stop shop
Local council strengthens IT infrastructure to consolidate services and contact points
Harrow Council has completed work on Access Harrow, one of the first stages of its £100m business transformation scheme.
The project, run in partnership with Capita, began on 30 September last year and will run for 10 years.
The emphasis of the work so far has been to create an integrated infrastructure, says Carol Cutler, Harrow’s director of business transformation.
‘The Access Harrow project has involved physically building a one-stop shop and contact centre at our civic centre site, kitting it out with customer relationship management (CRM) and a lot of business process re-engineering,’ she said.
Harrow is carrying out a soft launch for the service; the first customers used the new shop last week, with the formal opening set for the middle of next month.
The shop will start by handling enquiries related to revenues and benefits, parking, housing and tourism.
Access Harrow will become the first point of contact for every service the council offers, says Cutler. ‘All of the relevant and appropriate systems integration will enable us to meet our target of dealing with 80 per cent of customer enquiries at the first point of contact,’ she said.
‘We expect that the projects we have completed will realise savings of about £45m, which is roughly equal to what we have paid out for them.’
Harrow now plans to build on the work with three new projects: a document management system, mobile working and improvements to social care records.
‘The document management system should make us entirely paperless, while the mobile systems will use CRM as a hub for social workers or refuse collectors to work flexibly,’ said Cutler.
The local authority is also installing an SAPsystem for council-wide money management, and a project to gain better data for management decision-making.
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