Case Study West Lancashire Borough Council

Case Study: West Lancashire Borough Council
Automating processes and tasks in Aareon QL for Housing Department

Product | TaskCentre
West Lancashire County Council’s Housing and Inclusion department wanted to provide up-todate,
modern services to its customers whilst trying to reduce costs and resources. Using
TaskCentre in conjunction with Aareon QL, the Council has been able to automate many of its
processes, enabling it to resolve certain pain points and explore new projects.
The Challenge
Automate repetitive,
manual processes
Improve integration of
business systems
Improve services without
incurring costs
The Solution
Automated monitoring of
Aareon QL
Universal Credit
notifications automated
Integration with CRM
system and new apps
The Results
Removed manual
processes
Re-allocated resources to
new projects
Reduced costs spent on
third parties
The Future
Creation of tenant selfserve
app
Automation capabilities
for HomeFinder service
Integration of CRM and
new apps
“
As an industry, we have to use service automation if
we want to save money and save resources.
We might not be saving cashable money, but we are
releasing the resources to be directed to the right areas.
“
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Product | TaskCentre
Organisation Overview
Housing and Inclusion Department
Based in Skelmersdale, West Lancashire Borough Council’s Housing and
Inclusion department is responsible for housing and policy strategy, housing
options, estate management/regeneration, rents and money advice, sheltered
housing, property management, asset management, caretaking and gardening.
Organisation Information
Name: Craig Round
Position: Project Manager, Service
Development Team
Primary Applications Used: Aareon QL
Website: www.westlancs.gov.uk/housing.aspx
Organisation Details
West Lancashire is a non-metropolitan
district with the status of a borough in
Lancashire, England. Its council is based in
Ormskirk. The other town in the borough is
Skelmersdale. The population of the District
taken at the 2011 census was 110,685. The
district was formed in 1974 under the Local
Government Act 1972, as a merger of
Ormskirk and Skelmersdale and Up Holland
urban districts along with part of West
Lancashire Rural District and part of the
former Wigan Rural District.
“
We are going to get tailored resources to
do what we actually want rather than this
product is the only thing available.
Craig Round, Project Manager
“
The Housing and Inclusion Department is
based in Skelmersdale.
3

Product | TaskCentre
The Challenge
“
The introduction of Universal Credit
means that the benefit is paid directly to
the tenant or claimant and then they pay us.
Sometimes, this can be a challenge.
“
Improving Services Whilst Reducing Costs
As with many councils and housing departments, providing up-to-date, modern services to
customers whilst trying to reduce costs and resources has become a major challenge. In the
housing industry, much of this revolves around the handling and management of data. A task that,
if done manually, can be time-consuming,
costly and restrictive.
Remove manual processing and data checks
Address issues raised from Universal Credit
West Lancashire Borough Council’s (West
Improve services without incurring costs
Lancs) Housing and Inclusion department
wanted to streamline many of these processes
Integrate systems with new apps
and explore new services that would benefit
the entire department. Prior to the
deployment of TaskCentre with Aareon QL (a dedicated housing management system), many
processes were being performed manually, such as checking debit statuses at the weekend,
dealing with asbestos enquiries, generating and distributing surveys and reports as well as trying
to adapt to the changes introduced to the benefits system – notably the introduction of Universal
Credit – and the subsequent issue of having to chase payments.
With many separate services and systems,
such as its HomeFinder service, the
introduction of a new CRM system and a host
of new applications in the pipeline, the
department also required a solution that
would be able to integrate everything easily.
4

Product | TaskCentre
The Solution
“
Now, all the automated services happen
at the weekend and TaskCentre texts us
to tell us if there has been a failure or success
and the value of the amount that we're
debited to the account.
“
Automating the Debit Run
Managing debit and arrears is a significant issue for WestLancs’ Housing and Inclusion department.
Every Monday morning the rent team requires accurate and current information regarding the
balance status of each and every tenant. If there are any payments in arrears then they have to
attend court to seek possession orders for a
payment. In order to deliver this information,
the department needs to perform a Debit Run in
Aareon QL over the weekend to raise and check
the tenant accounts. Prior to the installation of
TaskCentre a member of the team had to
connect into the system at the weekend and
monitor it manually, making sure and checking
that everything was running smoothly and all the information was up-to-date.
Automated monitoring of Aareon QL regarding
debt and cash flow
Universal Credit notifications automated
Integration with CRM system and new apps
“It doesn’t sound much but it's a quite a heavy duty job for the system to do. One of the things
that we have got TaskCentre to do now is to monitor that over the weekend and tell us when
things have failed, succeeded or if there is a problem,” explained Craig Round, a Project Manager
from the Service Development Team, West Lancs. “Now, all the automated services happen at the
weekend and TaskCentre texts us to tell us if
there has been a failure or success and the
value of the amount that we're debited to the
account. TaskCentre then collates all of the
information and displays it to our team and the
rent team so that we have everything we
require for Monday morning.”
Monitoring Cash Flow
TaskCentre has also been deployed to monitor
the state of cash flow in Aareon QL and to
email all the relevant people concerned about
the value of the posting each night.
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Product | TaskCentre
The Solution
“
TaskCentre strips all the information
from the email and pushes the data into
Aareon QL. It then cross-references the
database to find out whether someone
is registered or not.
“
“It’s important that we protect our income and make sure that we’ve got cash on the system
when it should be and it's not floating around in the ether somewhere,” said Round. “We have
cash posted every night which can fail because we are reliant on 3rd party supply and cash files
etc. With TaskCentre monitoring the system and notifying the team, they know what to expect on
the accounts and what payments we've got when they come in the next morning.”
Implementing New On-Demand Services
Although the department uses TaskCentre for a lot of maintenance and back end monitoring, it is
also exploiting it for a lot of proactive projects, such as On Demand services. The team is currently
in the midst of implementing an app which will allow all of its customers to sign in and check rent
balances, make payments, order repairs etc.
The initial concept of this service has already been implemented, as the department has provided
an On Demand service, for the past twelve months, where people can, once registered, use SMS
or email to check their rent balance, or ask for their last ten transactions – a similar service to that
which many banks provide.
“We've built the relevant tasks so that people can register via our online pages - which is
basically our CRM system for the authority.
Rather than paying for expensive integration
we have used the email output from the
authority’s CRM system,” explained Round.
“TaskCentre strips all the information from
the email and pushes the data into Aareon
QL. It then cross-references the database to
find out whether someone is registered or
not. If they are registered we can send the
information back. If they are not registered
we can send them the information to register
and so on and so forth.”
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Product | TaskCentre
The Solution
“
The introduction of Universal Credit
means that the benefit is paid directly to
the tenant or claimant. We have built a series of
workflows to automate and address this
micro-management issue.
“
The department has adapted this solution to enable its officers to easily and quickly query the
Council’s property database via email. If one of its officers is on an estate and they see a property
with a broken front door or broken window, they can send an email with part of the address to
find out if the Council owns the property and is responsible for the maintenance and tenants
within. TaskCentre receives the email, scans the Aareon QL database and then provides a reply to
the officer.
Universal Credit: Automating Payment Communication
The introduction of Universal Credit in 2013 had significant consequences for councils up and
down the country. Replacing housing benefit, job seeker allowance, tax credits and income
support, Universal Credit now pays the benefits directly to the claimant / tenant rather than the
council. This has meant that council’s, especially housing departments, have had to re-evaluate
the entire rental management process. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) introduced
it to West Lancashire in September 2014.
“Whereas in the past the benefit would be paid directly to us, the introduction of Universal Credit
means that the benefit is paid directly to the tenant or claimant and then they pay us,” said
Round. “Sometimes, this can be a challenge, so we have built a series of workflows to automate
and address this micro-management issue.”
When a tenant applies for Universal Credit, the
department receives a notification and the
information can be updated in Aareon QL.
When the user changes a field in Aareon QL
TaskCentre automatically initiates a series of
triggers, including sending texts and letters to
the tenant. The letter correspondence is
completely automated. TaskCentre generates
the letter, sends it to the printer and it then
gets posted. A log is also written within the
Aareon QL system.
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Product | TaskCentre
The Solution
“
We've built a number of tasks within
TaskCentre to manage all of the
different elements so that people don't have to
manually enter information into Aareon
QL and chase up tenants.
“
“What Universal Credit doesn’t do, nor the
DWP, is that they don’t tell us when the pay
date is. So, within that text, email, letter, we
ask the tenant, when their claim is successful
and processed, to let us know when their pay
date is,” explained Round. “They can then text
or email us with the pay date and that
automatically updates Aareon QL. That gives us
a milestone as to when we can expect that
payment each month.”
With the pay date installed in the system, TaskCentre has been set up to monitor the dates and
then automatically sends alerts (texts and emails) to the tenant to remind them that they have
got a payment to make. This occurs seven days prior to the date and then on numerous occasions
up until and after. The officer who is in charge of that tenant or patch also receives an overview of
all the transactions. The reports that are generated from this information are used to evaluate
how things have been handled, what needs improving and the status of the accounts.
“We are trying to utilise what we have got in regards to TaskCentre so that we don’t have to take
additional staff on. We've got over 200 claimants now on Universal Credit, which is quite large for
the size of authority that we are, and that will only increase. However, we haven't actually taken
on any further staff to manage it. We've built a number of tasks within TaskCentre to manage all
of the different elements so that people don't have to sit there and manually enter information
into Aareon QL and chase up tenants. It’s all automated,” explained Round. “From the rental point
of view we would need at least a couple more staff to actually perform these manual tasks. Prior
to automation this would take at least twenty minutes per customer. We are now getting it down
to about eight seconds. So there is a massive gap there.”
Report & Document Automation for Asbestos Register
Another project that the Council has automated and implemented is access to its Asbestos
Register, which is contained within Aareon QL.
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Product | TaskCentre
The Solution
“
Rather than people contacting us about
the Asbestos Register and requesting
paper copy after paper copy, we've simply
made that self-service.
“
“This is a key factor for any repairs, as obviously we have responsibility as the landlord. If we are
contracting anybody to complete work on our properties we need to let them know if there is any
asbestos within the building so that they can take the appropriate measures,” said Round. “Rather
than people contacting us about the Asbestos Register and requesting paper copy after paper
copy, we've simply made that self-service.”
Thanks to TaskCentre, property surveyors can now easily add users and assign system accessibility
to the Asbestos Register by sending an email to TaskCentre, which automatically adds them to the
database and informs the end user. Once registered, the user can then request information via
email about a property and TaskCentre will return a PDF document with the full contents of the
Asbestos Register.
“From our point of view - the legal side - we audit all the transactions that TaskCentre does, so we
can see who has used it and what PDF documents were delivered as part of the transaction,”
explained Round. “If we are ever questioned in court we've got that full traceability of what has
been supplied to the contractor. It works both ways. If a contractor is doing work and not
checking the register we can see also. It's a check for us, but a double check should we have to
take any legal action.”
Automating Surveys
West Lancs is using TaskCentre for a number of
survey projects to try and eliminate a lot of
manual checking and processing. This ranges
from integrating with Survey Monkey to
automatically performing surveys via text and
email.
“There’s a lot of stuff in our property services
side where we are sending six-page, paperbased
surveys out about a repair that's
happened. My attitude is that we don’t need to
9

Product | TaskCentre
The Solution
“
If we sent out 6000 surveys in the past
we would probably receive no more
than ten responses. However, via this texting
method we received a response within
twenty-five seconds.
“
do that, we just need to think a bit more logically about how we are approaching things,” said
Round. “What we are currently developing is a simple text/email survey asking if the tenant is
happy with the service. If yes, all is fine. If no, it gets flagged up and a member of the team will
contact them directly. It just saves time sifting through a hundred surveys a day.”
The Department first deployed this method of carrying out surveys for the Tenant Involvement
team. Consisting of a three question text survey, the team was able to send out 6,000 texts in
eighteen seconds. A much quicker and cheaper way than printing them, putting them in envelopes,
franking them and then sending them out. It also meant the surveys were much more effective.
“If we sent out 6000 surveys in the past we would probably receive no more than ten responses,”
said Round. “However, via this texting method, not only did we get over 150 responses, we
received a response within twenty-five seconds. It’s not as high as it should be, but compared to
the paper-based manual method it’s much more effective.”
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Product | TaskCentre
The Results
“
We did an evaluation about five weeks
ago and TaskCentre has handled about
25,000 transactions in the last twelve months.
That is a significant amount.
“
Freeing Up Resources for New Services
With so many projects and tasks being automated by West Lancs, it seems reasonable to assume
that the deployment of TaskCentre has provided a significant return of investment. However, how
this is measured is always going to be pertinent to the organisation.
“It’s difficult to put a finger on it, just because of
Improved the payment process
how we currently work. I can’t say we’ve cut X
Removed manual processes
amount of posts or stopped something from
Re-allocated resources to new projects
happening. In a lot of these cases they are new
services – Universal Credit, the Asbestos Register, Reduced costs spent on third parties
On Demand – new projects that we have come up
with which, without TaskCentre, we would have
had to employ someone to do,” said Round. “I am always being asked what we are saving, what's the
cash flow amount? However, it’s not a cash value, it’s the resources freed up to do something else.”
“We did an evaluation about five weeks ago and TaskCentre has handled about 25,000 transactions in
the last twelve months. Considering the size of our local authority (we’ve only got a stock count of just
over 6000 properties) that is a significant amount,” said Round. “We’ve got this natural – what we call
a 'flat CRM system' – which grows or decreases as the team wants it. It's using that information we
have got. It's trying to think out of the box,
changing things that we do manually. The use of
TaskCentre is simply going to increase tenfold
from our point of view.”
The Housing Department is part of the local
authority and needs to connect with other
departments such as the Customer Services
Contact Centre which uses dedicated CRM
systems. TaskCentre is going to be used to
provide the integration rather than relying on third parties to build and integrate them – a task
that Craig is more than happy to perform in house.
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Product | TaskCentre
The Results
“
Rather than spend a lot of money with
third parties we want to do everything
ourselves as much as we possibly can.
TaskCentre allows us to do that.
“
“Rather than spend a lot of money with third parties we want to do everything ourselves as much as
we possibly can. TaskCentre allows us to do that. There's so much we are going to exploit. For me it
is very easy to use. The drag and drop environment provides all the elements required and it's a
product which flows. Although there is some real complex stuff going into some tasks – Universal
Credit for example – it didn’t actually take that long to create. Because of the structure of
TaskCentre there is a lot of things that you can replicate – making similar tasks do different jobs.”
“We are moving forward now at a great pace. We’ve got lots of things going on. For our
organisation it's going to free a lot of officer time, but it's also going to save a lot of expensive
integration – reducing the costs that we usually pay to third parties. We are also going to get
tailored resources to do what we actually want rather than this product is the only thing available.”
Due to the innovation and projects that the Service Development Team have developed over the
past few years, many councils and housing associations have approached West Lancs for advice
and an insight into the projects that they have automated.
“You do these things in isolation within your own organisation, but when you open the book and say
does anybody do this, is anybody interested, it’s amazing the feedback that we get. We’ve had lots
of site visits and we’ve helped lots of people in
different organisations,” enthused Round. “As
an industry, we have to use service automation
if we want to save money and save resources.
We might not be saving cashable money for
some of the things we do but we are releasing
the resources to be directed to the right areas.
For me that's going to help organisations and
it's going to help them deliver the key
milestones that they need to deliver.”
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Product | TaskCentre
The Future
“
TaskCentre is going to be at heart of that
product for us. I'm going to be writing a
lot of the tasks which basically read the emails,
take out the text and import it into
Aareon QL.
“
Tenant Self-Serve App
Craig Round is constantly looking for new ways to use TaskCentre in order to streamline the
Department’s processes and improve the visibility of data. One project includes the
implementation of a tenant self-serve app, which TaskCentre will be deployed to automate a
number of tasks, and to handle the large
amount of emails generated.
Creation of tenant self-serve app
Add automation capabilities to HomeFinder
“TaskCentre is going to be at heart of that
product for us. I'm going to be writing a lot of Integration of CRM and new apps
the tasks which basically read the emails, take
out the text and import it into Aareon QL. This
may include sending out an order, or sending a
notification to our ASB or our estate management team,” said Round. “We will certainly be
utilising it not just as a data extraction and import tool, but also for system monitoring. It will be
an extension of what we are doing with the app itself.”
Data Monitoring & Notifications for HomeFinder Service
West Lancs provides a service called
HomeFinder which advertises properties that
are available for rent from West Lancashire
Borough Council. Registered people can use
the HomeFinder system to find out what's
available and to bid for a new home. The
system generates a lot of data, but Craig
Round believes that the Department isn’t
always using the data effectively.
“When someone bids on a house we
effectively know what they are looking for. I
want to use that data and cross-reference it
with other properties in the database using
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Product | TaskCentre
The Future
“
We will certainly be utilising it not just as
a data extraction and import tool, but
also for system monitoring. It will be an
extension of what we are doing with the
app itself.
“
TaskCentre and then generate a notification to a customer informing them that we’ve got
something available somewhere else for them,” explained Round. “We might increase our
revenue income because we are telling them about another property or we might reduce the cost
for them because it's a hard to let property.”
Automated Social Media
Craig is also looking at ways in which to use TaskCentre to act as the intermediary between
questions sent in via social media and the Department’s database which holds answers to all the
variable questions. In theory, TaskCentre will be the recipient of that information from social
media and will be able to answer that and post it back to social media or to the requester.
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