Bolton Metro Borough Council

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Bolton Metro Borough Council - Oracle e-Business

Fujitsu implemented the system with Oracle leading the foundation implementation of technology. Fujitsu consultants grew the functionality, implemented service requests and Field Service modules, telephony, systems architecture and the Intranet portal - an information management tool containing business rules.

Customer’s Challenge

Bolton Metropolitan Council receives up to one million callers and two hundred and fifty thousand visitors each year. With twelve reception points in the town centre and the many disparate departments taking phone calls, citizens complained that they were passed from pillar to post. The issues of consistency and quality were highlighted by the Government check 'Best Value Inspection' of services across the council.

Bolton wanted to deliver a more comprehensive service. Their vision was to offer a single point of access for citizens, to provide a consistent interface to all callers.

Fujitsu’s Solution

Bolton's solution lay in the Access Bolton initiative which would deliver:

• A contact centre to deal with enquiries from telephone callers and internet services such as email.
• A 'One Stop Shop' where citizens could drop in at the Town Hall in Bolton town centre.
• An Access Bolton website to allow customers to access services directly from their home, community facility or on-street kiosk.

Bolton had to cope with a significant programme of change with the creation of a new customer services division for the contact centre and the 'One Stop Shop' facility and the recruitment of staff and the establishment of structures to support these two facilities.

They recognised that they needed strong technology to deliver one point of contact, having to bring dozens of legacy systems together. The Oracle eBusiness suite was chosen to provide the wide ranging ERP and CRM technology required and the interface into these systems. Many legacy systems will remain such as Council Tax, Benefits, Education as they are too complex to be absorbed into the Oracle solution.

Fujitsu implemented the system with Oracle leading the foundation implementation of technology. Fujitsu consultants grew the functionality, implemented service requests and Field Service modules, telephony, systems architecture and the Intranet portal - an information management tool containing business rules.

Fujitsu worked closely with Bolton throughout. Tracy Fielding, Assistant Director - Customer Services, Finance Department at Bolton commented, “Fujitsu felt like part of the team. It hasn't felt like a strictly supplier/vendor relationship and it was down to the individuals who offer enthusiasm that made it feel like a true partnership” Fielding added, “Bolton and Fujitsu faced difficult situations together and the relationship stayed quite harmonious. The project manager was just fantastic and did anything to make things happen when they should.”

Benefits to our Customers

• There is increased accessibility of the service through opening hours. 'Access Bolton' is now handling well over 80% of calls at the first point of contact, a vast improvement over the previous 50% level.
• Staff can be trained far more quickly - within 8 weeks - to handle many different calls, since they no longer have to learn how to use all the legacy systems. Both 'Access Bolton' and 'One Stop Shop' handle a broad range of products such as council tax enquiries (representing 30% of all calls), bins, job applications, pupil and student services like school uniforms and environmental services such as noise pollution.
• Citizens can now phone, for example, for a fridge to be removed and the contact centre can take the payment, tell the driver and schedule the pick up all in one call.
• The contact centre can now handle switchboard calls with the aid of the electronic telephone directory.
• Bolton did not want to script the contact centre because they wanted staff to feel empowered and not like robots. They gave staff the flexibility to approach the call the way they wanted but still get all information they need. Having the internet portal meant that they do not have to remember all the business rules to answer a question.
• Call queue lengths have been improved, coming down from 8 minutes to less than 3 minutes - and Bolton expects to get that figure down further.
• The new system enables management information to be made available to help staff learn how to cater for the peaks and trough call cycles. Bolton is working with Fujitsu to harness this management information and to be able to present to Councillors information on what constituents have been asking about. For example, this might enable them improve the effectiveness of job creation programmes where unemployment is high, or to target areas of drug abuse based on reports of dropped needles.
• Geographical mapping on the system prevents doubling up on activities, such as road repairs and maintenance.

Our Approach

The implementation was broken into four phases.

• Phase One - Delivered a core CRM infrastructure to act as a foundation for future service areas and technologies. The primary service area delivered in this phase is a link to the existing council tax solution with the ability to handle their requests for service and a link into the authority’s Portal, providing a comprehensive set of FAQs and business rules to support all additional council areas and requests for information.
• Phase Two - Extended the core solution and requests for service to incorporate Environmental and Waste Management service areas. This was not only with the ability to take calls, but also to schedule and assign work, capacity planning for inspectors and crews and limited job costing.
• Phase Three - Upgraded the solution, offering increased stability and additional functionality specific to citizen management and roll out and train agents for delivery in a 'One Stop Shop'.
• Phase Four - This part of the roll out is delivering additional media channels, such as email centre and self service. It is also integrating deeper into the back office processes, either by subsuming within Oracle modules or integrating the front office with specialist systems and core Oracle ERP modules, offering a complete end to end eBusiness solution

Our Expertise

“CRM is ground breaking and not something that has been done before in local government. Bolton is one of the first to do this. A lot of councils have visited and been very impressed by what we have done,” Tracy Fielding explains. “Bolton needed a technology partner for its CRM implementation who had strong experience in the local government environment with extensive knowledge of the Oracle product. Fujitsu fitted the bill perfectly. We found that within Fujitsu they had more than enough resource with a breadth of experience to meet our requirements whenever we needed it. The strength of our partnership has been invaluable and Fujitsu has felt like part of the team.”