St Albans council integrates systems in effort to streamline processes

The transformation process

In the first phase of the project, the council implemented Arcus’s Digital Services Hub, a real-time self-service portal underpinned by Salesforce customer relationship management (CRM).

For the council, the portal has two distinct functions for both residents and staff. For residents, the Citizen’s Portal provides real-time interactions for a host of services such as Revenues and Waste & Recycling, and has given citizens the ability to serve themselves online from one single account.

“Essentially, self-serve functioning enables the citizen to transact with us when they want to, rather than when one of our offices are open. It also changes the way our citizens perceive us in terms of us being a modern and open-for-business service,” said Croft.

In December 2018, the council extended the portal to include MyTenancy, providing residents with access to live housing account information, including balances and payments. It also allows them to send and receive messages from the account.

Two months later in February 2019, the council went live with Arcus’s end-to-end green waste service, adding further functionality for residents and another online self-service process for the council.

“The new digital offering puts the customers’ needs at the heart of the journey by enabling them to self-serve online. It also gives us real-time information, which helps us better understand their needs and shape our services accordingly,” said Croft, adding that the project has freed up resources so the council can concentrate on delivering other services for people who truly need its support.

“Our decision-making was based on our perception of who the customer was, rather than the reality, and this was hampering the transformation journey.”

For staff, the Employee Portal was similarly developed for a range of internal processes such as human resource management, while a new IT service desk gave staff the same self-service functionality, essentially treating them as if they were an internal customer.

“Following a very successful first two years of the transformation programme, we have seen positive change and can quickly react to changing needs of both citizens and businesses without the traditional issues associated with legacy IT systems,” said Croft. “As such, we are primed for the next step of our digital journey.”