Colchester Borough Council
As a longstanding Serco customer, the borough's back office systems are built on firm foundations and it can set its sights higher than most. The authority is exploiting technological advances to deliver services through new channels including a contact centre, website and digital TV.
Chief Executive Adrian Pritchard explains why we were awarded the initial £10m ten-year contract. "We chose Serco because of their innovative approach and partnership style. They clearly understand what it is we are trying to achieve - an ambitious cultural change programme and top quality customer services, centred on e-government."
Serco provides full IT outsourcing services to the borough, including server and applications management. Council staff now benefit from a more robust, resilient ICT infrastructure that allows them to work more efficiently and deliver a better service to citizens.
The council's programme to improve services also included the establishment of a Customer Service Centre to handle citizens' queries more swiftly and efficiently by joining up information previously held in several disparate systems.
Two years later, delighted with the progress made towards its goals, the council invested a further £1.65m with Serco to drive efficiencies in frontline services in line with the Gershon Review.
We are now implementing a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution that integrates with departmental back office systems to enable end-to-end processing. This will give customer service centre staff all the information they need on their desktops, allowing them to respond more quickly and accurately to enquiries about street services and revenues and benefits.
Over the next 12 months we will work closely with the borough to extend the system into other areas, such as Housing and Planning and Environment, where a centralised customer service approach will both improve service and reduce costs.