West Sussex County Council Meets Statutory Service Delivery Goals with Verint Operations Manager
West Sussex County Council is the authority that governs the non-metropolitan county of West Sussex in the South of England.
The results
Increased performance productivity from 91% to 97%.
Manages more than 3,000 tasks with just 250 team members.
Adheres to rigorous KPIs for service delivery and performance.
About West Sussex County Council
West Sussex County Council is the authority that governs the non-metropolitan county of West Sussex in the South of England. Administration of many Council services (including social care, education, highways, and waste) is provided by Capita, a consulting, transformation and digital services business, delivering innovative solutions to transform and simplify the links between businesses and customers, governments and citizens.
The opportunity
Prior to the implementation of Verint Operations Manager, Capita and the Council were relying on an assortment of manual processes to allocate administrative tasks and manage complex, multi-touch processes.
According to Mikaela McLeod, Operations Manager at Capita, this predominantly paper-based way of working undermined efficient and effective Council operations. “We manage a wide variety of administrative services on behalf of the Council, and there was minimal insight into the allocation of tasks or the process journey. It was difficult, for example, to judge the volume of incoming or outgoing work, turnaround times, or which tasks had been allocated to which person.”
As a long-time, satisfied customer of Verint in multiple solution areas, the Capita team turned to Verint Operations Manager to untangle the complex work allocation and improve performance at the Council. “Engagement was vital,” says Bethan Watts, Management Information Analyst at Capita. “Once the teams saw how Verint Operations Manager could transform not only individual performance, but also the performance of the overall Council service delivery, they engaged with and trusted the technology to support their everyday workloads.”
Read the Full Success StoryFine-tune operations with Verint Operations Manager
Fast forward six years from the initial implementation and 250 Capita staff now administer more than 3,000 tasks on behalf of West Sussex County Council. Many of these processes relate to highly sensitive public services, such as social care, child protection, or education psychology. Using Verint Operations Manager, the team can ensure these tasks are completed by the appropriately skilled person, within the agreed statutory timeframe.
“We live and breathe Verint Operations Manager,” exclaims McLeod. “I couldn’t cope without it! Every day, we rely on it to allocate Council work to individual team members, based on task priority, skills, availability, and other criteria. Some 88 tasks have KPIs ranging from two hours to 18 days, and with the Verint solution we can effectively allocate each one.”
Team managers also share a timely, connected view of performance, which is reviewed daily. “We monitor metrics such as who are the top performers, the number of outstanding hours, and turnaround times,” explains McLeod. “We are using these critical insights to fine-tune our operations and optimize the allocation of work.”
Forecast future administrative workloads
More recently, Capita has added “performance as a service” dashboards, which are presented to the Council every month to validate service performance across the individual public services. For example, West Sussex County Council’s Education Department can see every task associated with pupil admissions administration, elective home education, or pupil entitlements. Using the dashboard, the department can monitor every task, the volume of tasks, and the turnaround time. If a particular process was subject to extended processing beyond the KPI, the data shows the reason why. “These dashboard insights contribute to a much more collaborative customer relationship,” notes Watts.
In addition, using Verint Operations Manager, the Capita team can forecast future administrative workloads. Watts continues, “Education services experience very high peaks at certain times, relating to the school calendar year. We can now examine historical workloads and use these to predict where we will need to add skills and resources for the coming year. It’s all about being proactive.”
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''Last year, our productivity performance metric was 91 percent. This year it is 97 percent. Verint Operations Manager has made a significant contribution to that success.''
Automate the distribution of work
One of the great innovations in this deployment has been the Verint Operations Manager Work Allocation Bot functionality, which uses artificial intelligence to automate the distribution of work across the team. The idea for the deployment originated from Capita’s regular wellbeing focus group team meetings. During these sessions, it became clear that people were devoting more and more time to allocating work each morning, especially if there were absences or high-priority KPI work arrived unexpectedly.
Capita trialled the Work Allocation Bot capability among a low-risk team with very few KPIs and minimal outstanding tasks. Very quickly, it was apparent that the bot allocated tasks accurately and reliably, freeing up resources to focus on other work. Since, Capita has steadily rolled out the feature to more complex teams, so it now supports all 3,000 tasks across the staff of 250.
Watts led the implementation. “Verint Operations Manager’s Work Allocation Bot enables us to accurately allocate tasks based on skills, availability, or other criteria. It can also allocate tasks to very specific users, with specific skills. Likewise, we can use an exceptions list to allocate work during peak demand, such as the administration of free school meals at the start of the school year. The technology gives us the best of both worlds. Members of the team can administer and process Council services more effectively. Meanwhile, managers spend less time collecting and assigning work, and more time monitoring work items.”
“The Verint Operations Manager Work Allocation Bot has definitely freed up time, especially as we respond to homeworking during the COVID-19 pandemic,” says McLeod. “Team Leaders are now able to focus on a more coaching based role, identify improvement opportunities, and provide training where there are knowledge gaps. Last year, our productivity performance metric was 91 percent. This year it is 97 percent. Verint Operations Manager has made a significant contribution to that success.”
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