1. Asking good questions – the first step to good answers Using Systems Thinking in Wiltshire’s digital programme John Rogers Head of Systems Thinking and Customer Access Wiltshire Council
19 October 2017

2. What we mean by Systems Thinking
Using good information and good sense to design transactions, services and systems aligned to customer purpose and delivering the maximum value to customers, across the system.
In Wiltshire, that means multi-service and multi-agency work, and aiming always to understand and address root causes (of demand/presentation) as a means to improved effectiveness and better prevention.
Two horizons: Better for Now, and Right for the Future.
Good humour, persistence and patience….

3. About Wiltshire
Large rural unitary authority: an hour-plus (by car) from side to side, two hours from top to bottom.
Just under 500,000 residents; approx. 220,000 homes. One sizeable town (Salisbury, 60,000) and another 15 market towns of 10-30,000 people. Swindon (unitary BC) in NE corner. Military garrison about 20,000 personnel.
Salisbury Plain and large areas of designated AONB.
M4 and A303 only trunk roads and both run east-west. Main rail lines run east-west through north and south of county; situated 1-1.5hrs west of London by train.
Very high employment but large multiple between average earnings and average house prices. Technology sector employment growing fast, but overall a goal to create more high value jobs in the county.
Good schools with excellent school exam results but no university.
Using systems thinking for service improvement for 10 years.

4. Load, fire, aim? With lots of possible targets…
And almost as many people tugging on you shouting “this one”, “this one here”, “NOT that one”, “NO THIS ONE!!”,
And “just fire you’re bound to hit SOMETHING”
What could possibly go WRONG?

5. Beginning with our customers
Who uses which services – some numbers
Universal services only – approx 450,000 (90%); revenue spend approx £120m i.e. about £270/person/year.
Libraries, leisure, highways and streetscene, development control, public protection, waste and recycling, transport, parking, schools...
Often (not exclusively) high volume services; often transactional.
Universal services only

6. Beginning with our customers
Who uses which services – some numbers
Universal services and safety net services – approx 45,000 (10%); revenue spend approx £190m (60%) i.e. about £4200/person/year.
Range: up to £100K per year for some individuals.
People who are affected by one or more of :
Low/no income
Insecure housing
Older people with long term condition(s)
Learning disability or SEN
Mental health condition
Physical disability including visual/auditory impairment
Substance misuse
Domestic abuse
Risk of harm or exploitation, especially children
Universal only £120m
Safety net and
universal £190m

7. From baseline survey to work plan: approach
Customer Access Baseline: initial demand survey and basic process and performance analysis (completed)
Selecting priority service transactions (identified)
Detailed demand analysis and validation (current)
Analysing the ‘why’ behind the ‘what’ (current)
Quantifying potential (current)
Developing potential solutions (current)
Ethos of this work

8. Developing digitised services – ethos
Collaboration/joint enterprise with the service areas
Expertise: experts in their service.
Ownership:
Accountable for service delivery.
Budgetary responsibility.
Request the investment; realise the benefits.
Enabling: programme’s role is to enable the services to deliver their future service as well and as cost-effectively as possible (two sides of same coin).

9. Customer contact demand – “heat map”
Analysed incoming demand …
by channels…
and by service.
A ‘heat map’ – where to look
Phone call volumes
Web data
inboxes
Counter counting – council offices, leisure centres, libraries….
Observation/shadowing
Legacy/ICT systems
Purely council but recognise other orgs

10. Analysis of approx. 2.5M transactions
Link to Dashboard Dashboard v11
Key measures, by service and transaction:
Volume measures
Annual volume of transactions, by channel
% annual transactions, by channel
Process measures (also by channel):
Operationally automated
Hand-offs
End-to-end times
Steps in the process
Number of IT systems used [manually] – nb also mapped

13. Channel analysis of over 2.5 million transactions
Digital already: 950K ex 2.5m
16 steps
4 steps 13
steps 6
steps
As of January 2017.
The picture continues to evolve…

14. 1 5 Largest number of steps >100 Fewest number of steps
Fewest number of Hand Offs
End to End Time
Immediate
Largest number of steps >100
Largest number of Hand Offs 5
End to End Time
> 28 days
Justyna
Extreme ends of the scale
Example – parking, mipermit.
Highlighting the difference between services, not a one-size-fit-all (can’t just fix with eform for example)

15. We looked at the extent of end-to-end automation within the top eight services

16. Not automated = END TO END perspective – may have an e-form step but that isn’t automation…..

17. List of transactions we have collected information for – sorted by those which are completely digital, web option available and web option not available.
Visual representation of where we are with the services looked into. Scope of currently working well with digital and where we could move to – things with web options but not really designed digitally end-to-end.
Only 5 can be done completely digitally
Web option available – but has to have some manual process steps
Web option not available – those that have to be completed completely manually, only information available online.
How many transactions for each, those on left done, those in middle needs some perfection to fix some process, far right just hasn’t been started, not even a web option.

18. High level business opportunity…..
Average current process steps for current digital transactions = 5
Average “optimum” process steps for current digital transactions = 1.5
For current digital transactions alone, potential prize is = 3.5 x 940K process steps = 3.3M process £? [£2/£5/more?] per step.
This would be one – accessible – stream of benefits.
A further 24M process steps have benefit potential through redesign, automation and shifting onto digital channels....
From the current scope of demand – additional remaining.

19. How to achieve benefits?
Properly understand the customer transaction.
Redesign for value.
Automate where possible.
Be pragmatic and about what you do and when: even within the top 20 or so opportunities, easy and quick returns are essential for a ‘self-funding’ programme.

20. What if we could swap the red and green box?
Some examples for potential gains from Place services

21. How could we better share the information?

22. Hallo????

23. Garden waste renewal process (2016)
Post 18,000
Phone 60,000
F2F 7,000
Office hours only
5 x CS FTE x 3 months

25. Garden waste renewal process (2017)
Web: 65,000
Phone 20,000
24/7 with peak take-up 18:00-22:00
Automated

26. Excerpt from PID: transactions by volume
Customer Transaction
Volume
Book a leisure class/facility
700,000
Apply/Enquire for housing benefit
6,500
Pay/Query council tax
100,000
Apply for housing options
6,000
Housing benefit enquiry/change of circumstances
Housing rent payment query
Council tax moving house notification
55,000
Registered to vote queries
New sales order request (AR)
29,000
Book bulky waste
5,000
Report a highways issue
24,000
Apply for school transport
4,000
Apply for leisure/club membership
21,000
Information on school transport
Request a repair to my council house
12,000
Apply for bus pass
Apply for school place
11,000
Apply for a Licensing Act licence
Report a missed bin
10,000
Information on bus passes
3,000
Request a new bin
Cancel a bus pass
Request a building control inspection
Set up a new customer (AR)
Apply for planning permission
8,000
Apply for building regulation applications
Request a replacement bin
7,000
Request a pest control treatment
Provide evidence to housing benefit
Both are Council Tax

27. Selected service transactions – process
Apply customer purpose to demand
Break demand into sub-types
Analyse the processes that customers and staff follow, including enablers and barriers
Understand why they contacted us and why they chose that route.
Predict likely digital take-up and estimate £ value of hours of work.
Develop costed options to enable easy and convenient E2E digital service for the right transactions, with maximised customer take-up.
Predict the amount (hours) of work removed and tangible benefits.
Jointly/agreed with service throughout this process.

28. Customer Purpose for Council Tax
“To pay my Council Tax and know it has been paid”

29. Once it is set up, direct debit satisfies customer purpose and requires minimum interaction – if you stay at one address and your direct debit is paid, it’s fully automated. NIRVANA!
As of April 2017, in Wiltshire there are 216,000 households.
16,522 or 5% receive full benefits or are exempt properties, and do not pay council tax. There are approximately 199,478 which are eligible to pay council tax.
145,663 or 68% paid by Direct Debit.
A further 37,293 or 17% pay by other payment methods (eg Cash, Cheque, Debit/Credit card etc…) via less efficient means (eg Post, F2F, Phone etc…)
In itself paying by Direct Debit is a digital transaction, in that it requires no human intervention to make payments.
The only reason for this group to contact us, is if there is if they have a change in circumstances which may effect the amount they have to pay, such as moving house, or they elect to contact us, for example with a name change.
Because of this, we think that the majority of processing effort is made on the customers in the 17% who pay council tax by means other than Direct Debit.

30. Demand split by means of payment
Customer payment method
% of customers
# of transactions
% of transactions
Direct debit
80%
53,469
20%
Other
191,531
Why do direct debit customers contact us (at all?) What could be automated?
We know that 80% of customers pay by DD. Our demand capture has identified that those on DD generate about 53K additional transactions per year. The annual transactional cost is 109k which is 20% of the overall processing cost. 20% of our customers (Non DD payers) are generating 80% of our F2F and phone demand.
This group generate 80% of the CT team’s work. Where can digital delivery make it easier and faster for them, and cheaper for us?

31. Customer purpose and behaviour – what they do and why they do it…that way
Analysing web searches/hits/journeys and incoming s.
Talking to customers at reception.
Listening to what customers say and ask for in phone calls.
Thinking: how does this inform our assessment of the potential for digital delivery for the transactions in this service?

32. Detailed demand by channel
Service
Transaction
Type of transaction
Channel
Transactions per Annum
Hourly Rate
Cost of Officer Processing Time
Interaction Cost Per Annum
Potential for digital %
Potential for digital
C/Tax
Moving House
I want to notify
F2F
3,000
£11.63
£2.13
£6,397
80.00%
£5,117
plus postage
Phone
12,000
£25,586
£20,469
I want to notify (Band H)
38,000
£92,543
100.00%
I want to notify (Band M)
£18.19
£0.30
Web
2,000
£4,264
£3,411
Pay/Moving House/ Queries/ Reductions/ DD requests etc
I want to pay or information
13,000
£27,718
£21,486
Update personal details
I want to update my personal details
416
£888
Arrange discount/refund/benefits
I want to arrange discount/refund/benefits
666
£1,421
72.73%
£1,033
Repayment schedule
I want to re/arrange my payment schedule
125
£266
64.71%
£172
Information
I want some information
833
£1,776
71.67%
£1,273
Pay
I want to pay
10,243
£21,841
82.61%
£18,042
Create/amend Direct Debit
I want to re/arrange a direct debit 42
£89
81.82%
£73
Report fraud
I want to report fraud 4 £9
33.33% £3
Respond to summons
I want to respond to a summons
29.41%
Advice
I want some advice
0.00% £0
I want to pay or information Tel CT
117,000
£249,464
£122,248
4,052
£8,639
£6,912
5,571
£11,879
8,610
£18,359
30,390
£64,796
£46,437
11,649
£24,838
£20,519
16,714
£35,638
60.00%
£21,383
1,519
£3,240
£1,080
£5,400
29,883
£63,716
C/Tax CS
I want to pay or information Tel CS
20,000
£1.94
£38,767
£27,068
1,220
£2,364
£1,891
3,252
£6,304
£4,584
813
£1,576
£1,020
6,098
£11,819
£8,470
£9,764
£1,289 41
£79
£26
£23
1,626
£12.63
£2.11
£3,423
/post
£81,022
£48,613
£64,818
£2,559
These transactions merit further work – they are an exchange of (factual) information or money:
Moving house – especially and phone
Payment – F2F
Updating personal details
Arrange/amend direct debit
Requests for information (as opposed to advice) eg account balance/amount due

33. Further analysis into these transactions which have good potential for digital delivery and take up (totalling 140k)

34. Change of Address
72% of Change of Address requests are via a digital channel

35. Quantify the automation and benefit potential
Service
Transaction
Type of transaction
Channel
Transactions per Annum
Cost of Processing Time
Potential for digital %
Other benefits?
C/Tax
Moving House
I want to notify
F2F
3,000 ?
plus postage
Phone
12,000
I want to notify (Band H)
38,000
I want to notify (Band M)
Web
2,000
Cost each transaction by channel (time to process x staffing costs/hour, as advised).
Assess the potential for digital of each transaction, based on customer purpose and customer behaviour/the nature of their enquiry/contact.
Develop options including investment costs for how to digitise each suitable transaction, including changing the triggers, processes, and customer behaviours.
Predict benefits/ROI based on volumes, costs, and potential for digital.

36. Staff time – cost of Change of Address
Demand capture identified 7 minutes on phone plus 4 minutes wrap up. So 11 minutes in total for each transaction.
It’s much the same for an request
Total hours of staff time = 10,700 hours per annum
However….
Analysis of inboxes identified 35% of Change of Address s as having data missing, resulting in an back to the customer and then processing their reply.
This additional cost has not been included in the figures….

37. Approx. £200,000 potential value of purely ‘raw work’.
The work that remains is to develop options for ‘how’ and implement….
Same graph, the green blocks are the transactions which we believe could be in scope for digitisation…
And finally…

38. Change of address – worked ‘what if’ example
What if customers could advise us of change of address online and it was an entirely automated process?
A proportion of the contact from D/D customers would disappear. What would be left (D/D set up?) and how could we address that?
What about sending updated bills electronically? What impact on chasing contact “where is my bill”? What about annual bills?
Once customer information is going directly into our Council Tax application, how could we leverage that across the organisation?
Bring proposal/options: solution(s), investment, projected returns.

39. The other ‘transactions of interest’
Payment – F2F (10,000pa) – options to change?
Updating personal details (8,400pa) – direct into CT application?
Arrange/amend direct debit (18,400pa) – digital options?
Requests for information (as opposed to advice) (38,900pa)
Account balance/amount due to be paid
Date of payment
Reference number
Update website; direct from CT application.
Total work for all CT readily digitisable = 16-20,000 hours pa.

40. How to achieve benefits?
Understand customer purpose, understand the demand and customer behaviour in terms of what customers want to do.
Find the places with high potential value and likely digital uptake (we are starting with exchanges of information and money).
Redesign for value.
Automate where possible.
Leverage and re-use the information the customer is providing.

41. Discussion and questions
Thank you – and following up….
For further information, contact
Slides and content, and applying the systems thinking approach to digital work and to public services
Wiltshire partnership’s three-day Systems Thinking ‘immersion’ course – taking up places or on-site delivery.