Glasgow City Council overhauls finance and HR systems to achieve savings of £1.8 million with Serco
Overview
Glasgow City Council, one of Scotland’s largest employers, serves a population of 600,000 citizens. It provides a range of services to its citizens that need to be supported by its finance department.
Faced with the Government’s efficiency agendas, the council has had to look at ways to reduce costs, streamline financial processes, and improve customer service.
The challenge
The council relied heavily on the manual processing in its finance operations. With an ageing infrastructure and disparate legacy systems, time and effort was often duplicated.
In order to reduce duplication of tasks and re-keying of data, the council needed a new IT solution. To make a smooth transition onto a new system , without compromising service, it needed complete confidence in its chosen IT partner.
The solution
In February 2003, a team of 20 staff was brought together to contribute to Glasgow’s vision to deliver better value and customer driven services. The “1 Business” initiative was set up as the back-office efficiency programme designed to support the rollout of an IT solution for finance, HR, and payroll. Serco was selected in October 2003 following a competitive tender.
Following a successful go-live in November 2004, the council now has a single software system that processes all sales orders. Customer records have reduced from 125,000 contacts to 25,000, with SAP now acting as a single corporate customer database for sundry revenue.
With consistent business processes across council departments and one point of data capture, the council can manage business critical data electronically and can view the status of all its financial operations. The council also has a longer-term platform to respond more flexibly to its citizen’s needs.
Ian Tully, Deputy Director of Financial Services, Glasgow City Council, comments: “Glasgow City Council and Serco have worked together to develop a system that provides a multi-dimensional view of the customer, where time to input and access information has been reduced considerably. The first step towards achieving efficiency was to introduce a robust sales process with the functionality to streamline our processes. Serco’s consultancy has been second-to-none and ensured that the solution was rolled out within tight timeframes.”
The benefits
With over a quarter-of-a-million invoices and a diverse range of services, the council’s sales can now be managed across the enterprise - from initial contact to invoicing and debt collection. Automated processes are now in place for authorising sales and generating standard invoices. It has enabled the council to increase income by improving recovery rates, shortening billing cycles and reducing time in administration.
Through SAP and Serco, the Council has a single perspective on debt. With a streamlined and accelerated timetable for the follow-up of outstanding debt, the key performance indicators (KPIs) are improving. Prior to the implementation of the SAP software , 37% of invoices were paid within 30 days. This figure, for 2005/06, now stands at 76%.
Invoices are more user friendly and complaints are analysed to identify where the process has broken down. Customer training is enabling frontline staff to provide a consistent approach. In addition, the software system has enabled the Council to identify cost savings and achieve £1 million in savings for 2006/2007. This is expected to rise to £1.7m by 2008.
Ian Tully, Deputy Director of Financial Services, Glasgow City Council, comments: “We now have a controlled, user-friendly, corporate sales system that provides a much more structured approach to revenue. We have transparency of processes and procedures that were previously departmentalised. Also, for the first time, we have ownership of the sales process and can analyse the interface with the customer from all angles.”
He continues: ”The Council also implemented the relevant modules from SAP to support financial management. A fully integrated financial ledger has been successfully implemented across all Council Services. The implementation included SAP’s integrated projects system and asset register, which was introduced to support the Council’s capital accounting requirements. Standard business processes have been introduced in all areas, with master data creation and maintenance supported by workflow. The SAP reporting tool, Business Warehouse, has also been implemented to provide integrated financial and non-financial information from the entire SAP suite.”
As well as the sales & financial management streams, the HR change programme has generated impressive results. Over 70 business processes have been redesigned resulting in reduction to costs, lifecycles and errors. A structure now exists to enable the production and monitoring of statistical information across services, with the ability to produce reports instantly. The payroll element serves over 30,000 Glasgow City employees and has reduced payroll-processing costs by £1million.
Future plans – electronic service
Glasgow City Council is continuing to build upon the strong foundations it has laid through IT. Detailed quantitative reports are being monitored to measure and improve service. Future developments include several online projects to provide its citizens with the ability to shop and pay for services through the Internet.