Wirral MBC

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Wirral MBC

In its drive to improve service delivery, the Council identified the need for a number of new or enhanced systems.

Customer's Challenge

Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council (MBC) was formed in 1974, following the reorganisation of local government, and covers 25% of the Merseyside area. It is a very large, complex organisation with a 14,000 payroll, including teachers, who provide a comprehensive range of services to Wirral residents.

In its drive to improve service delivery, the Council identified the need for a number of new or enhanced systems. In particular, it wanted an application to support the creation of a customer contact centre and a new commitment accounting system to help control expenditure. The Council also needed to replace its ageing mainframe computer and upgrade its payroll and human resources (HR) systems.

Charles Allan, Programme Director, Wirral MBC, continues, “The Council had reached a point where we needed to make fairly substantial changes to our IT infrastructure, but we recognised that we didn't have the necessary skills in-house to bring about such a major transformation. So, we commissioned a study to find the best way forward, which concluded that it would be more cost-effective to base our systems around a core suite of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications and modify our working practices to suit, as this would also bring them in line with best practice procedures.”

Fujitsu's Solution

Following an extensive competitive evaluation, Wirral MBC awarded Fujitsu a seven-year contract to help transform the way it provides services with a fully integrated range of business applications, based around Oracle's eBusiness Suite and Documentum's Enterprise Content Management (ECM) and Workflow solution. The contract also provides for future discretionary projects to be undertaken in order to achieve ongoing improvements in the way that the Council operates.

Called the 1Business Programme, the first phase involved the implementation of a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system which enables staff to 'pool' data, track service requests and queries and respond to the full range of customer needs quicker and more effectively.

The second phase of the programme will involve the creation and replacement of back office systems that will deal with specialised technical areas and processes such as payroll and financial management. The third phase will create knowledge management and workflow systems that will be used to streamline the management of the Council's documents and data.

Through its modernisation agenda Wirral is already championing new initiatives to introduce electronic facilities to more people and to make new technology more accessible to all. For example, every library now has an ICT suite with training available on computers and the Internet. Other recent improvements in service delivery include nine 'One Stop Shop' customer information centres and the customer Call Centre. The 1Business Programme will enhance this agenda and the CRM is up and running in the One Stop Shops, Call Centre and Street Scene back office.

Explaining why Fujitsu was chosen Charles Allan says, “Overall we have three aims. We want systems delivered that worked. We want the necessary knowledge transfer so that we can use them. And we want a change process so that we can educate people on how to get the best out of those systems - and prove the benefits. As well as offering good value for money, Fujitsu has been excellent in delivering all of that, because of its transformation skills, extensive integration and technical knowledge and close cultural fit, particularly in the area of change management. I don't think there are many organisations that can deliver such an extremely complex project.”

Benefits to our Customer

Fujitsu's consultancy services are enabling Wirral MBC to cost-effectively transform its operations and:

• Increase productivity - the new corporate applications will streamline processes and introduce best practice procedures
• Enhance customer service - improved information sharing and knowledge management will enable more customers to be effectively served in less time
• Minimise estate costs - greater staff mobility will allow more people to work in the community and reduce the need for expensive office space
• Optimise performance - the Council can concentrate its resources on achieving its strategic aims, including obtaining an 'excellent' rating in the government's “Comprehensive Performance Assessment”
• Reduce IT support costs - tight integration of front and back-office systems will make support and maintenance much simpler and more cost-effective.

Steve Maddox, Chief Executive, Wirral MBC, says, “The Council has been streamlining and modernising our organisation and we are relying on Fujitsu to harness new technologies in order to bring about an evolutionary change in the way we deliver our services.”

“The partnership with Fujitsu is designed to put the customer at the heart of everything the Council does by using new advances in communication technology to improve the way staff work, and deliver improved services faster and more effectively,” adds Charles Allan.

“It's all about slimming down and doing more for less and with Fujitsu's help we expect to save well over £10 million by better resource usage and changing the way we do things to get the most out of the new IT tools being installed.”

Our Approach

A particularly strong aspect of Fujitsu’s service offering is its change management tool, Macroscope, which is a template of business and IT methodologies developed using international standards and Fujitsu’s core set of best practices. Macroscope provides a consistent, proven framework for evaluating projects to make sure they deliver on their intended business outcomes.

“The Council did not have a change management methodology, but Macroscope was a complete solution that we could deploy immediately,” explains Charles Allan. “In fact, it will be effective in supporting our IT-enabled transformation programme, by maximising benefits and containing cost.”

Working with the Council, Fujitsu has been using Resultschain®, one of the 4 elements of the Macroscope® methodology, to establish a comprehensive range of benefits (outcomes) together with the activities necessary to achieve them - normally organisational and/or business process changes. The benefits identified include financial savings, service delivery efficiency gains, improvements in customer access and increased CPA rating.

Workshops have been held with stakeholders from all departments impacted by the 1Business Programme and a comprehensive programme of change activities has been established. Fujitsu is now working with the Council to deliver the change programme and to monitor the achievement of the benefits.

Our Expertise

Fujitsu has over 30 years experience in providing consultancy and project services to help organisations design, deploy and manage advanced IT infrastructures and gain maximum benefit from the latest technologies.

Charles Allan says, “We didn't want someone to come in and just implement the necessary systems. Instead we wanted a partner who could understand our needs and bring their experience from the outside world to us in a way that we could understand and benefit from. In other words, we wanted a partner who would give us options and Fujitsu fits that bill, because it offers a mixture of solid steadiness and new ideas.”