How to Maximise Automation in Revenues & Benefits and the important role that statistics play.

In the current economic climate, more pressure than ever before is being put onto Local Authorities to save money and resources and of course automation plays a big part in that.

So how do you know whether your automation is delivering all the results and cost savings that you need?

Getting the most out of automation is a journey of continuous improvement, a partnership between the Local Authority and its supplier. Once you have deployed automation, how do you review progress? At Govtech, my Client Management Team helps and assists customers to continue to improve both online take-up rates and overall levels of automation.

We produce quarterly reports for each of our customers so they can see how their automation is performing. Each report highlights the number and type of transactions handled, the percentage that was automatically completed and the reasons why interventions were triggered for cases that could not be automatically completed. These reports have been extremely well received by customers and provide a useful tool to benchmark their progress against other councils.

Service Reviews

The reports provide useful summary information but, to quote Benjamin Disraeli “Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics”, raw statistics can be interpreted in many ways, which is why Govtech offers complementary Service Reviews to each and every customer to look in great detail at transactions that are not being automatically completed. Govtech automation is controlled by configurable business rules so we explore whether the parameters could be optimised in a more advantageous way to increase automation; through ‘secret shopping’ and comparisons with best of breed customers, we explore how you can direct more people to your website, make the website easier to navigate and so on. We look at marketing and promotion of online services to identify what is working well and, as importantly what is not working well.

Service reviews for all customers are part of the core Govtech service and they are free!

Every Govtech customer is treated as a partner. We want our customers not only to deploy our automation services but also to get the most out of them. Only by getting the best out of automation will our customers achieve the very challenging cost savings and efficiencies that are now demanded.

Since Govtech measures everything, there is a wealth of information available that can be dissected and dissimilated. At times I do feel like “Statto” from the Fantasy Football League (apologies to those readers under the age of forty and with no interest in Football!). But understanding the statistics and imparting the knowledge they provide is something in which my team and myself take pride. We want to help customers get the most out of their partnership with Govtech. In so doing, our aim is to make every Govtech customer a reference site and an effective advocate to others for the benefits of automation.

What is on the Horizon?

Investing in new innovations and continuous improvements to find further ways to help local authorities and their citizens in these challenging times is something that takes up a great deal of our time at Govtech.

In the summer of this year, our new on-line, self-service reporting system will be released. Customers will be able to configure reports for specific time periods and/or transactions and be able to follow the individual audit trails for specific files.

Later in the year, a further enhancement will help customers to identify how much of their online traffic is still being mediated by Local Authority staff. This will help to provide better measures of the returns on investment in, and the effectiveness of, online self-service and help to identify where further improvement efforts should be targeted.

So, interesting times ahead for our customers. For those people reading this who are not Govtech customers, please make sure that you ask your supplier the following three questions:

1. What automation statistics are available to me, that I can compare against other authorities?
2. Do you offer complementary (i.e. free) service reviews to help us to identify ways to improve our automation rates and do you measure this improvement?
3. Following implementation of your service, can I obtain assistance, advice and guidance whenever I need it, without having to raise a purchase order?

If you don’t like the answers to any of these questions then why not get in touch with Govtech and see how we will use automation to reduce your workload, enhance your citizens’ online experience and create the ‘space’ for you to focus your attention on your most important Revenues and Benefits service priorities.