London Borough of Newham
“Business Objects is helping to maximise the benefits that citizens can claim, improve the quality of service that we can offer and ensure that Newham Borough Council is making cost effective decisions”
Geoff Connell, Development Services Manager
For the last 3 years, the London Borough of Newham has sought to improve the quality of its decision making and subsequently the service it can offer to the citizens of the borough. A data warehousing project was the catalyst for moving information into the hands of end users, rather than the IT department as before. It was seen as a good opportunity to reduce the reliance on IT in providing information while, at the same time, allowing the policy and performance managers the flexibility they required in analysing data.
Maximising Benefits
As one of the poorest boroughs in the country, a key area for focus has been the anti-poverty and welfare rights unit which is responsible for providing different types of benefit to citizens. Business intelligence from Business Objects has been used to help improve the efficiency in this area in trying to provide more benefits to those that need them. Analysis is carried out according to criteria regarding individuals and benefits to identify where opportunities for claiming benefit are being missed. Mailshots are then targeted to focused groups of people to make sure they know about the types of benefit they could be claiming. Finally Business Objects is used to periodically measure the change in benefit take-up. As a result of this type of initiative, Newham has increased the amount of benefit delivered to citizens by £2 million over the last 4 years.
This success has led to the use of Business Objects as a de-facto standard for reporting and analysing information across the borough. For example, decision makers in "Regeneration services" are able to analyse the cost impact to the borough of building roads along alternate routes, ensuring that more quantifiable and informed conclusions are reached in the shortest amount of time.
Another initiative, called the WarmZone project, involves proactively searching out members of the community who are entitled to a heating grant - based on criteria of the percentage of income spent on fuel bills. This information is normally canvassed through door-to-door enquiries, but the information in the data warehouse has proved more accurate than the usual, manual method of data collection. As a result the initiative is now more cheaply run and more efficient in discovering those entitled to grants.
Improving Customer Service
Another key area where business intelligence is helping the borough achieve its goals is through improved customer service. Through analysis across the call centre and 7 local services centres, customer needs are being more fully understood, to identify the types of services that are required and how resourcing and planning can improve the quality of the service provided. For example, monitoring is carried out on the number of visits customers make to the service centres, the requests and issues they have, and how problems are resolved. This information is then helping the borough to establish the shift requirements of personnel, resourcing requirements and the best opening hours of the centres. It is also assisting them in planning for more self-service initiatives that will reduce costs while improving the service provided. The better the information they have about their customers, the better the opportunity to provide the right service at the right time, through the right medium.
The objective of this analysis is to reduce the cost of servicing - where current levels are from £15 for a person-to-person meeting to 10p for self-service - by profiling the different customer groups and their needs and finding the most efficient way of addressing them. Business Intelligence is helping Newham to achieve this while simultaneously empowering managers with information and the capability to make beneficial decisions for both the borough and customers alike.
