Client
Gloucester City Council
Department
IT & Transformation
Project
Optima Digital Solutions was appointed to assist with the integration of the Alloy back office system to the Granicus govService platform within a limited timeframe due to previous project setbacks.
Background
In 2022, a new waste contract was implemented at Gloucester City Council. The new provider, Ubico, is a local authority jointly owned company. This allows several neighbouring authorities to combine their environmental service requirements into a single organisation that provides better value for councils and residents.
To manage its services, Ubico and partners (including Gloucester City Council) jointly procured and implemented the Causeway Alloy task and asset management system. This allowed them to link front line teams with Ubico back office and Council customer care systems. The Alloy system was developed jointly by Ubico and partners but unfortunately as each authority involved was using different CRM systems, this meant integration could not also be undertaken jointly.
Our brief
We were contacted to assist with govService process development and integration between back office systems. We were briefed to undertake:
- Two-way integration with Alloy for several govService processes.
- Solution architecture and process development for new processes such as Garden Waste, Bulky Waste, Extra Waste Capacity and more for the govService platform.
- Testing and quality assurance before go live.
- Project management for all processes.
- Knowledge sharing and handover to existing team members throughout and after the development process.
What we achieved
- We reviewed the current integrations with the govService platform and how these had been setup to work with forms, including reviewing functionality that could be standardised across various forms.
- Lack of existing team capability to integrate with SOAP and RESTful APIs meant that we needed to also provide knowledge sharing to help better understand what these integrations do and how to debug if required.
- We created new standards for address entry, customer contact details and payments to be used across any process developed on the platform.
- The new fully automated Garden Waste process allows customers to carry out requests online. This saves over 2,500 hours per year of processing time for staff members and reduced calls to the contact centre.
- The new Bulky Waste process saved over 1,000 hours per year of call time for contact centre agents by allowing them to process phone bookings quicker, whilst also reducing calls by allowing customers to book collections online themselves.