Project title: Digital Transformation and Channel Shift

What was required

Engaged to save Worcestershire County Council £2.5m a year, as part of a second tranche of savings amounting to £20m a year, by carrying out a programme of channel shift to move contact to less expensive media and at the same time improve communication by providing 24/7 contact facilities, designing the model for provision, specifying the systems and personnel interactions necessary to deliver the service, specifying communications and other technical services and interfacing with the programme to roll-out high speed broadband across the county.Required roll out of the government’s Digital By Default strategy to Worcestershire.

What we did

This engagement was carried out in nine stages that were constantly reviewed and revisited to take advantage of new information becoming available.

1. Organised and managed a series of workshops, interviews and questionnaires involving employees from all levels and departments of the Council, council service users, partner organisations and third sector.
2. Analysed the data gathered, compiled detailed diagrams and reports on the council’s “AS-IS” processes and verified the current costs of communication.
3. Helped the council to communicate the benefits of change to members of the pubic, employees, senior executives, elected members and business partners.
4. Designed a strategy to move channel contact with the council to electronic means, auto-answering phone system, web forms, auto-alerts and so on to provide an inexpensive two-way flow of communication 24 hours a day 7 days a week, using Voice of the Customer Analysis to validate the proposed services.
5. Developed the financial model to support this strategy and to provide financial justification based on balance of investment and taking account of operational needs.
6. Selected and promoted the use of appropriate analytical models.
7. Engaged with potential suppliers and partners and derived the model for contracting and sub-contracting.
8. Planned the staffing requirements, deployment of resources, modelled and managed acquisition of systems and services and specified bespoke systems development.
9. Controlled commissioning of services.

The end result (how this helped the client)

• Cost savings of £2.5m a year harvested from closure of the most expensive communication channels.
• Interface between the council and other bodies had been characterised by out-dated means of communication. The channel shift enabled information to be obtained and supplied in as timely a manner as possible (e.g. cell phone alerts for changes in travel and transport arrangements).
• Capture of interactions permitted statistical analysis of contacts which fed into planning for improved service provision.
• Successful commissioning and service deployment of new strategy.

Client’s assessment

• Financial savings from channel shift made a contribution to meeting government financial targets.
• Improved communication and better provision of information demonstrated through surveys.
• Easier interface between council and related bodies claimed by anecdotal evidence.