Document Processing Efficiency Reaps Financial Rewards for Surrey Heath Borough Council

Replacing paper driven processes with electronic ones has enabled Surrey Heath Borough Council to make substantial back-office cost savings and improve the efficiency of frontline services for 80,000 constituents. Moving-out the paper freed-up substantial storage space at Surrey Heath’s Camberley offices. This led to Surrey Police and the NHS moving in and a much needed rental income being generated for the Council.

How it began – in common with many councils, financial, healthcare, education and private sector organisations, Surrey Heath’s offices were filled with paper. It wasn’t easy or quick to find documents and this was compromising efficiency and customer service.

Surrey Heath’s vision for improvement was to implement a standardised, secure and universal document and records management solution for the entire organisation.

This would liberate them from paper drudgery, improve the working day for staff and deliver better customer service for residents. It wasn’t an option to ‘rip and replace’ existing systems and software. Records Management had to be implemented piece by piece as budgets allowed and driven by business priorities.

Surrey Heath started the transition from paper to electronic processing over ten years ago. Old paper planning documents were scanned and ‘filed’ on a CD to facilitate desk top look-up.

At the point they wanted to expand document management technology beyond CD storage, Surrey Heath contacted business process solution provider ProcessFlows.

ProcessFlows installed an in-house document management system to store all Surrey Heath’s electronic planning records. The system was designed to meet immediate requirements, but it was robust enough to expand in a modular way to meet future business needs.

Document management was integrated with the Council’s planning system to enable desktop verification of electronic planning documents with information held in the planning system. Previously, verifying information required a member of staff to retrieve planning documents from the basement store and then manually plot the grid reference on the OS map to locate the relating site.

A web based planning portal was also set up to provide the public with direct online access to planning information.

The benefits of this electronic way of working quickly became evident. Staff became more efficient, customer service dramatically improved and office space, which had been clogged-up with paper files for years, was liberated.

The self-service sharing of information model was gradually rolled-out across other departments; each integration taking Surrey Heath a step closer towards their universal document and records management vision and releasing more office space.

The vacated office space was taken up by Surrey Police and the NHS, providing an additional rental income for the council and a convenient contact location for the public.

Surrey Heath is still working towards their paperless office goal. They continue to work with ProcessFlows to implement technology and solutions which will generate even more efficiencies and budget savings and further improve frontline services for residents.

A few saving stats:

• Rental income of £10,250 per annum from previous storage space
• £13,000 annual savings made in Environment and Housing
• £19,500 saved annually in Licensing
• £12,849.75 of product replacement saved so far

“With a reliable and robust document management system is in place, you’ll quickly discover that employees feel much more productive as they no longer need to spend time on the mundane and frustrating task of searching for documents. Stakeholders approve because the operation is more productive and less costly, enabling them to get closer to the saving targets set by the government.”
Matt Lindsay, Applications Support Officer, Surrey Heath Borough Council

Further information:

A short whiteboard video of the Surrey Heath document management journey can be viewed here:

The full Surrey Heath case study can be found here.

Both Surrey Heath and ProcessFlows are available for interview.

Public sector, financial, healthcare, education and private sector organisations can all benefit from the paper-freedom that business automation brings to the daily working lives of staff and clients.

Notes to Editor

About ProcessFlows

ProcessFlows, based in the centre of Winchester, Hampshire, is a leading provider of solutions and services designed to improve business processes and communications. Since 1987, ProcessFlows has helped thousands of businesses, local councils and government departments to increase efficiency, improve customer service and implement controls for regulatory compliance.

ProcessFlows combines business process expertise with market leading technology to provide flexible applications and workflows that augment existing systems and can be deployed quickly to provide a fast return on investment. Our nearshore outsource centre in Sofia provides expert support and managed services 24×7. ProcessFlows offers expert advice at every stage – understanding requirements and providing implementation, training, support and on-going customer care.

Follow us: @ProcessFlows on Twitter | ProcessFlows on Facebook

For further information, contact:

Loira Browning, ProcessFlows e: enquiries@processflows.co.uk t: +44 (0) 1962 835053