InContext July 2006
The e-newsletter for information, records and content management professionals
North Warwickshire Borough Council achieves impressive efficiency gains with EDRM - a case study
‘Increased efficiency’ is one of the many phrases now used to encourage local government organisations to improve service levels to their ‘customers’. TOWER Software’s TRIM Context Electronic Document and Records Management (EDRM) suite is having a major impact on both efficiency and compliance within North Warwickshire Borough Council.
Organisational Profile
North Warwickshire Borough Council covers a mainly rural area, over half of which lies within the Green Belt. Over 61,000 people live within the borough, in towns and villages ranging in size from Atherstone parish with 8,000 residents to Seckington with just 51.
Business Challenges
After a review of its administration and information-handling processes, North Warwickshire Borough Council decided to adopt a policy of electronic document and records management (EDRM) for all council documentation and correspondence. Although prompted mainly by its own desire for greater efficiency, the decision was also influenced by a need for better sharing of information through the council’s various departments, a move towards compliance with the ‘Gershon Review’ of public sector efficiency and the delivery of the authority’s own ‘Priority Outcomes’ objectives. Looking further ahead, such a move would also provide the council with an important tool for meeting standards required under the Freedom of Information (FoI) Act and other e-government initiatives.
In fact, North Warwickshire Borough Council had already implemented a document management system within its revenues and benefits division some 12 years previously, but the shortcomings of this system became increasingly apparent when the council attempted to share data across departments. “We became frustrated with its ongoing costs and limited functionality,” commented Council IT project officer, Trudi Barnsley. “The system just wasn’t flexible enough for extended information sharing across the council’s divisions and efforts to make it work properly frequently tied up our IT staff for days on end. So, we decided to look externally for a single solution to our entire EDRM needs,” she added.
Barnsley and her colleagues wanted a new EDRM system to effectively form the backbone of the council’s new information management strategy and went through an open tender process to find a new solution partner. “We wanted the EDRM system to be central to our new document retention and disposal policy,” continued Barnsley. “Once the policy was in place, we needed a system capable of handling it all, while meeting all of our specific product requirements, including XML and e-GIF compliance. We were also keen to employ a system capable of running through fat, thin or browser clients, in anticipation of a move towards web access and flexible working practices.”
The Solution
Wokingham-based EDRM specialist, TOWER Software was unanimously chosen from an initial line up of 13 potential vendors. The Company’s award-winning EDRM solution - ‘TRIM Context’ - is a single, integrated platform that manages business information throughout its complete lifecycle. “Thirty people across the authority scored each of the vendors based on a series of functionality demonstrations and their ability to deliver within budget. We were particularly impressed by TOWER’s records management capabilities and ‘TNAapproved’ status. We also took credence from a recent Butler Report on the leading EDRM vendors, in which TOWER featured very highly,” she continued.
Although the majority of the council’s records are ‘Microsoft Office’ documents like Word files, Excel spreadsheets and emails, which present no real integration issues, there were specific needs in some council departments, including the planning department – for viewing and measuring plans up to A0 in size.
Around 80% of the documentation within the authority needs to be indexed against specific properties. As part of the overall strategy, the council wanted officers to be able to search the Local Land and Property Gazetteer database (LLPG) in order to identify the correct property to file information against, rather than type in an address every time. TOWER Software completed a very detailed integration of its solution to meet the council’s specific needs that now saves around 2½ minutes per document entry. Using TRIM Context has now provided the council with a system which produces consistent, accurate results - fast.
As well as managing documents and records themselves, TRIM Context has also been integrated with (TOWER
Software partner’s) ‘Singularity’ workflow suite in order to provide an orderly workflow process as documents
arrive into the system. To meet the council’s document retention and disposal policy, each newly-registered
file that is part of a business process now launches a workflow process which automatically allocates a task to
someone’s work tray to action.
The Results
“We have been very impressed with the speed at which we’re able to retrieve the information we need, along with all of the related documentation,” says Barnsley. “It’s a vast improvement on the paper-based process, where only certain people knew where to find certain documents. Getting the right information to the right people at the right time is reaping enormous rewards in terms of service delivery and cost savings from streamlined processes. TRIM Context has not only improved access to information internally but to the electorate as well, thus dramatically raising external service levels. We’re now equipped to deliver best-in-class online services and to enable mobile working for our front-line staff.”
Overall, the implementation, integration and centralisation of TRIM Context has delivered major benefits to North Warwickshire Borough Council in several major areas. With departments including Housing, Legal Services and Facilities Management all now fully-functional, users are finding real benefits in being able to link the system directly to other core council applications such as the Oracle-based Land & Property gazetteer, case files, and desktop tools. Indeed, TOWER Software’s own professional services team has been instrumental in ensuring that all critical users became fully-conversant with the system in the shortest possible time.
“It may be a cliché, but TRIM Context does exactly what it says on the tin,” concluded Barnsley. “Past experience told us that we were expecting to face many challenges during this implementation, but in reality the only real challenge has been encouraging users to think differently now that we have a system which is capable of making a huge impact on both our efficiency and service delivery.”
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