The Challenge

Lewisham Council was facing many challenges in 2016, in addition to budget cuts, changing customer expectations and an aging population, they included:

• Area office closures but a poor digital experience resulted in high visitor numbers and large volumes of calls to various services.
• Manual and labour-intensive processes to complete customer enquiries.
• Large number of aging, obsolete and poorly functioning technology systems including SharePoint 2010 CMS, Gandlake Customer Portal and Dynamics 2013 CRM.

The Solution

Digital First have worked with Lewisham Council over the last 3 years, and have delivered many projects and outputs. These are grouped within our ‘Insight, Design and Delivery’ Digital Consulting Methodology, key aspects

Insight Phase – Digital First worked with staff and managers from across Lewisham Council to undertake analysis and benchmarking of the current digital service delivery position. Outputs – A Digital Strategy and supporting Business Case.

Design Phase – During this phase a Digital Transformation Programme was designed, agreed and mobilised. This covered all service areas with detailed opportunity definition, delivery structures and programme governance.

Delivery Phase – Through a blend of internal, external and Digital First resources, the programme has delivered on many fronts in the last 2 years. Knowledge and skills transfer to the Lewisham team has been vital, to sustainable success. The new customer facing website and digital delivery platform combines Sitecore CMS with Dynamics 365 CRM online.

The Results and Benefits

Embracing digital service delivery, on an end to end basis from customer initial contact to resolution of the enquiry, has the following key benefits:

The organisation becomes more relevant to customers who want to transact at times and through channels that suit their lifestyles.
Cost of service delivery is reduced as manual contact handling is reduced and fulfilment processes are automated.
For Lewisham, this has had the following benefits:

• A 15% reduction in telephone calls and a 14% reduction in face to face visits between January 2016 and January 2018.
• A 45% increase in customer completed online service requests in the same period.
• A 29% increase in Council website traffic to over 19million page views a year in 2018.
• This resulted in a saving to the Council of £330k in front office staff costs and a further £1.3million of of back savings over the next 2 years.