Following the local government re-organisation in April 1996, Conwy County Borough Council emerged from the ashes of Aberconwy Borough and Colwyn Borough Councils and now employs in excess of 6,000 staff to deliver its services. Located in Conwy, North Wales, the Council serves 115,000 residents, collects council tax from 53,000 households and supports 12,300 residents with benefit payments.
"The Revenue and Benefits Assessment Service at Conwy County Borough Council have over a period of time seen the benefits that new technology can bring to the Service. In 1999 we introduced EDRMS within the Service which enabled us to improve service delivery and achieve savings and this in turn enabled us to implement home working for staff in 2004 and more recently mobile working for its council tax and NNDR Property Inspectors, which have all resulted in efficiency savings to the Authority. Similarly, with ProPrint consolidation it was identified that the product would contribute to achieving further efficiency savings at a time when all local authority’s budgets are being cut and early indications are that those savings will be achieved.
Following the local government re-organisation in April 1996, Conwy County Borough Council emerged from the ashes of Aberconwy Borough and Colwyn Borough Councils and now employs in excess of 6,000 staff to deliver its services. Located in Conwy, North Wales, the Council serves 115,000 residents, collects council tax from 53,000 households and supports 12,300 residents with benefit payments.
Conwy County Borough Council, like many other authorities, regularly investigates options to improve their bill and notification creation and delivery process. Resulting from this review, three cost saving and customer satisfaction improvements were identified:
After careful consideration XLPrint’s PARIS ProPrint software was purchased through Capita. The new software was implemented mainly by Conwy County Borough Council staff with some consulting assistance from XLPrint.
The authority used ProPrint software to design and format all documents that previously required pre-printed stationery. The authority also worked closely with XLPrint‘s consultants to implement the ProPrint consolidation process module. This is used to merge council tax and benefit bills/adjustments together based on customer account numbers, removing the need for two deliveries.
The consolidation process also provides the separation of the finished documents into one or more batches containing merged or unmerged documents.
This has assisted the Council’s downstream approval process as the different document stacks can be quickly passed to the relevant reviewer without the need to manually separate the finished documents.
Based on the results of using ProPrint over the first nine months Conwy County Borough Council estimate they will achieve the following savings and improvements:
In addition the Council now has the following benefits:
Two of the three cost saving and resident satisfaction improvement objectives have been fully achieved. The foundation for the remaining objective has also been established. All new documents are generated in a finished electronic form. Currently these are printed. The next step is to offer citizens and businesses the option to receive bills and notifications via email.
The authority is now working on an email campaign to offer electronic delivery to residents, landlords and businesses and this will represent significant additional savings over the next few years.
Conwy County Borough Council has been delighted with the flexibility ProPrint has given and support provided by XLPrint’s consultants. They will continue to explore the software’s capabilities to improve customer satisfaction and reduce cost.
