EXECUTIVE SUMMARY X0007 in One Short Paragraph Please Describe This Project and What It

Our new customer orientated and innovative appointment system, coupled with our new mobile working approach has dramatically increased service efficiency using fewer resources, increased customer satisfaction levels and keeps our customers fully informed throughout the repairs lifespan in the face of financial, workforce and culturaladversities.

In analysing our customer feedback, tenant inspection reports and internal reviews about the services we deliver, this initiative was borneout of understanding and fulfilling customer need on how the organisationcould change its 42% of wasted calls to its call centre within its repairs service.

The existing repairs service appointment system which had been in operation since 1996 was in need of modernisation. The system was technologically outdated and needed a more customer oriented approach in offering appointments for our repairs service. Through redesign of our business processes and practises and benchmarking with other organisations, Housing and Building Services introduced a new appointment scheduling system (Optitime).

The repairs improvement team was set up from members across the service area (operational supervisors, trade operatives, foremen, housing manager, trade unions and existing system users). In order for the project to succeed, the team had to work in partnership withother services within the Council and consisted of representatives from Customer Service Centre, Council Information Services and IT Services. These service areas provide the main access point for our customersto our service and their input and understanding of customers’ needs and preferenceswas absolutely critical to the success of the project and the project team.

At the same time the opportunity was taken to adopt a modern, flexible, mobile working and lean management approach to the repairs service. The team set about implementing the use of the Cognito mobile working system with our trade operatives. This set the team a number of huge challenges over the 15 month period from start to live operations and included changing traditional cultures(paper works orders and processes), overcoming barriers to change with an ageing workforce andchangingcorporate protocols within the organisation to allow a managed service.

The system supported the national and council’s modernisation agendas using technology to improve service delivery and helped support a flexible engaged workforce. This has driven higher customer satisfaction levels and kept our customers fully informed throughout any repair journey. As a result, we have reduced our wastage calls to nearly zero within the service, adding value to the service for our customers and provided a solid platform and foundation to meet future service challenges.

At every stage in the project duration, our customers and staff were kept fully informed and engaged, either through project update releases, meetings or newsletters. Our customers’ views were built into the revised repairs process and one such request resulted in a dedicated repairs hub being set up, rather than having generic call handlers in the Customer Services Centre to deal with initial repair requests. Through training, this dedicated team improved customer repair information being captured at the outset and customers were kept more informed regarding their agreed repair appointments.

The Optitime/Cognito system was implemented acrossour Local Repair Teams, whoprovide day to day type repairsto our Housing stock and initially piloted within theplumbing section, followed by electricians as these trades were seen to be more suited in the small types of work they carryout. The initial results of 30% efficiency savingsallowedfifteen trade operatives to complete other capital and planned maintenance projectsand this had the added benefit of increasing the organisation’sproductivityand achieving a more with less concept.

The other main trades of joinery and builder work were rolled out shortly thereafter and encouraged the service to seek and maximise further areas of practical application. Future areas identified include gas servicing/maintenance, estates management, repair inspectors, larger planned maintenance and capital works.

Business processes were also reviewed and updated around the customer as part of moving towards mobile application and electronic capture of information and the application of lean management provided a consistent approach in these reviews. This resulted in streamlined workflows, speedier service and our customers kept more informed at each stage of a repair journey.

The project team recognised that overcoming IT barriers played a crucial aspect in delivering the system effectively. Housing and Building services had recently came together as one service area but still operated two computer systems to monitor its repair service. The team needed to address double the amount of interface issues, which was both demanding and challenging as our computer systems were nearing 20 years old.

Team members set up focus groups with our customers on the repairs service and went the extra mile and used our annual tenant’s conference to glean information on our proposed customer satisfaction survey questionnaire, our customers thoughts on ease of use, screen colour and layout of the mobile devices (pda’s), being trialed by our trade operatives. This venture proved to be highly successful as we now obtain over 70% customer satisfaction return levels via this method, from the 2% historical conventional card option. This allows us to continually improve and deliver a service that reflects our customers’ feedback.

The project team worked alongside our workforce and used trade focus groups to review repair processes and workflows and we used a buddy system to train and up-skill our workforce on the use of the new technology. This alleviated the initial fears of our workforce, who then more readily accepted and took ownership of the new system and removed an initial barrier to change within the organisation. The success of the project is not restricted to budgetary issues. Administrative staff whose main job tasks were previously data input of repair details were given new roles and responsibilities and became Planner/Schedulers operating the new Optitime appointment system. This allowed the organisation to reduce its administrative overhead and increase its staff knowledge and capabilities and the organisation’s skills base.

The project team recognised that corporate protocols had to be changed to allow the mobile working to succeed as Cognito provided a managed service, this meant working in partnership with our IT services and suppliers to provide Cognito access through the Council’s IT firewalls. The team’s partnership approach, persistence, and creativity finally found a solution that satisfied all parties. The managed service provided leading edge niche market support that complimented and supported the finite in-house IT resource. The added benefit allows our operational managers to concentrate on delivering the service as opposed to fire fighting technical glitches.

The success and concept of the repairs visibility initiative in Housing & Building Services has been identified as an area of best practice within West Lothian Council and knowledge share opportunities have been extended to other services. The project is now being consideredin Domiciliary Care to stimulate the same improvement in the quality of care provided to older and vulnerable people in the community. This has allowed the Council to start negotiating a landmark corporate license fee with the software supplier, adding potential more value for the citizens of West Lothian.

In addition, the team set up the” Friends of Optitime” working group with other Scottish Councils in order for them to learn and share knowledge from the team’s experiences. Our first meeting was attended by 10 different Councils either in the process of implementing or thinking about utilising this model. We have also had delegations from other local authorities attend and view its impact and benefits.

The installation of an appointment system in our service has realised so many customer and operational benefits across the spectrum of services being delivered by the organisation.The innovative thinking, hard work and persistence of the project team were rewarded when realisation of benefits started to unfold when live operations started in May 2009.

Listed below are some of the achievements obtained to date from a customer perspective:

• Customer satisfaction levels have increased from 88% to over 99%
• Average time taken to complete a routine repair is 8.4 days compared to 11 days previously
• Doubled our number of appointments to 80% of day to day repair jobs now being offered appointment service
• Jobs complete at 1st visit over 96% through empowerment of operatives
• Reduced the number of wastage calls to nearly nil as customer kept fully informed through text messaging service

Not content with excellent results being derived from the customer’s perspective, the team’s motivation and enthusiasm then turned to the operational aspects of the repairs service. In particular the project team decided to issue appointed repair jobs one at a time and this had an immediate impact and acknowledgement by the trade operatives of reducing their stress levels as they could concentrate on providing a quality service to the job being worked on, resulting in added customer benefits.

Operationally the following impact and benefits were derived:

• Increased productivity (one or two more jobs per operative per day) through geographic setting of appointments and mobile working
• 30% efficiency savings as system allowed the transfer of 15no. Repair trade operatives to carry out other planned and capital works, thus reducing on outside contractor and agency costs. This equated to £750,000 per annum.
• Reduced sickness levels from 7.5% to 0% within local repair teams using Optitime and mobile working system
• Better utilisation of resources (vehicles, fuel, time) through geographic appointment setting
• Over 98% of all emergency and day to day jobs completed within target date

Some other current and future benefits are shown below:

• Real time updating of work order details to our repair computer system
• Next day performance information compared to previous 4 to 6 weeks
• Reduced Number of jobs being sent to Standby out of hours
• Future potential efficiency savings if fully deployed within the service area to be in the region of £2- £2.5 million

To this end the project team deserves the recognition, the publicity, and the satisfaction that theyhave redesigned and improved the repair service for the tenants of West Lothian. They have facilitated a more efficient, effective and customer informed repairs service to be delivered in the face of numerous adversities currently existing within local authorities and are leading the way for other service areas and councils in also providing improved services.