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Summary
Faced with an unprecedented financial challenge, Croydon Council implemented
transformational change across a four year period. During this time, Atlantic
Customer Solutions worked with them to achieve significant sustainable
efficiencies (accumulating to £32m annually) without cutting services through an
engaging inclusive approach which led to real ownership, inculcating a
commercial mindset and platform for sustaining progress in the face of continued
pressure on funding.
- The backbone of the early programme was Directorate level budget review
facilitated by Atlantic Customer Solutions
- Atlantic’s approach was to bring private sector experience from
organisations such as British Telecom, where there was an annual challenge to
reduce budgets while simultaneously maintaining or increasing customer
satisfaction
- To facilitate the build of the budget from scratch, the Atlantic team
conducted focussed interviews, direct observations, and highly interactive
workshop with all levels from front line social workers and customer service
representatives to the Executive Directors.
Results
- Central Service efficiencies of the order of £3.2m. In this case, Atlantic worked with the contact centre team to increase call handling capacity by over 600 thousand calls annually at no additional cost
- Community Service efficiencies totalling £5.1m identified in Parking, Libraries, Leisure centre contract, waste collection, and waste disposal revealed post budget review
- Social Services Department and Atlantic together identified and implemented transformation programmes driving efficiencies of over £8.5m. The ZBB methodology was customised as any drop in service could have disastrous consequences at a human level, making “cuts” not the ideal solution
- A large proportion of these budgets are spent on providers, many of them profit making. Atlantic brought a commercial understanding to the table. Allying this with the Social Services team’s deep knowledge of their service allowed the implementation of a programme which maintained the delivery of services without compromising service. Over the course of our work with Social Services, the management team achieved a 4-star rating
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