BENEFITS

Digital automation for benefits


Route your claims from whatever source they originate through eCAPTURE and it will automate the matching, validation and cross-checking of claim content against your existing records. When loaded into your Benefits system, claims presented to assessors are ready for immediate assessment.

Streamline data processing and increase your officers’ productivity

Automating the capture and loading of Benefit claims does not mean that claims are not checked. Rather, the checking is automated and that frees up assessor time to focus purely on the more complicated aspects of assessment. Customers using eCAPTURE report much greater degrees of accuracy irrespective of assessor experience, as well as much faster processing.

If you are seeking a way to improve the speed and accuracy of benefit processing, make your resources go further and to simplify and enhance a claimant’s digital experience, eCAPTURE has you covered.

Eradicate-mistakes

Eradicate mistakes

Data integrity is engineered throughout. Rule-based checks mean nothing is ever missed, forgotten, or duplicated.

Increase-output

Increase output

Customers attest that assessors process 3 claims in the time it used to take to do 2. That’s a 50% increase in productivity!

Focus-resource

Focus on what matters

Resources aren’t consumed by clerical tasks, so assessors can focus on the more important aspects such as income verification and customer engagement.

Peace-of-mind

Peace of mind

Every claim presented to an assessor is subjected to the same rigorous regime of quality assurance, ensuring decisions are made based on accurate information.

Easier-for-customers

Make it easier for customers

We've been designing benefit claimant forms for over 15 years, and our suite of web forms are easy to follow, simple to complete, and only ask questions that are relevant to each individual claimant.

Effortless-implementation

Effortless implementation

We take away the integration complexity and support a wide range of channels. Once we've setup our system, you submit claims and check them in your benefits system, to ensure your configuration is supporting your rules.

Transform the way you utilise assessor resources

>1000

every claim subjected to extensive business rule checks and validation

100%

claims loaded without assessor intervention, ready for assessment

DMS

PDF claim rendition and evidence auto-indexed into your document management system

factual

claim renditions aid assessors by highlighting everything eCAPTURE noted about the claim

3in2

accessors can process three claims in the time it used to take to do two

1st time

assessors get claims right first time, irrespective of experience

RH-eCAPTURE-process

eCAPTURE is Govtech’s digital process automation service for welfare applications such as Housing Benefit, Council Tax Reduction (CTR), Discretionary Housing Payments and Awards, as well as other applications such as Concessionary Travel, Blue Badge, etc. eCAPTURE validates and transforms the content of each claim so that this can be loaded without further intervention into your NEC Revenues & Benefits, Capita or Civica benefits system, ready for immediate assessment.

  • Govtech forms are simple for citizens to complete, attach evidence, and submit
  • eCAPTURE also works with any vendor’s claim forms
  • Low value tasks such as data entry and manual indexing are eliminated
  • Automated checking and cross-checking of claimant data against existing records
  • Changes in Circumstance automatically identified and flagged
  • Other affected claims automatically pended and suspended
  • Significant information (e.g. single claimant has joint bank account) highlighted to assessors

I’M INTERESTED

Sandwell MBC was the first council to implement eCAPTURE. Within 6 weeks, the council had ceased using 6 agency staff and eliminated overtime. Within 3 months, it had redeployed 5 more staff away from claims processing into other priorities. After 12 months, after its first Subsidy Review, the council was so confident in the accuracy of data that it moved to sample checking only, releasing two more Review staff for other priorities. After two years, the council hired four new assessor trainees; for the first time ever, all the trainees passed their probation period at the first attempt, were processing an average of 12 new claims per day each – and getting them right first time.

Claims submitted in web forms are routed direct to Govtech’s processing centre in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, via a secure communications network provided as part of the service. Claim content is routed through eCAPTURE where this is validated, matched and compared to existing claim data in the benefits system. Any errors, omissions or anomalies are noted. Claims are then routed to the council and loaded into the benefit system using the benefits system vendor’s APIs. No robotics is involved. A PDF rendition of the claim is auto-indexed into an appropriate work queue in the document management system. When an assessor retrieves the document and looks in the Benefit system, the claim is present and ready for immediate assessment. The document rendition contains appropriate information, such as reference numbers, that have been drawn from existing records and draws the assessor’s attention to anything of significance that eCAPTURE has noted about the claim. Assessors deal with any such anomalies, verify incomes and assess the claim.

Simple and non-disruptive to deploy, eCAPTURE Benefits is a service with no software to buy or new technology to master. It presents claims to assessors in the normal way but with most of the time consuming work already done. eCAPTURE can be supplied with its own suite of web forms or it can accept claim content from forms supplied by or built in any vendor’s platform, including IEG4, Victoria Forms, Granicus-Firmstep, Team Netsol, etc. eCAPTURE fully integrates with the NEC Revenues & Benefits, Capita and Civica benefit systems and with any mainstream document management system.

RH-eCAPTURE-process

eCAPTURE can accept content in many formats, including:

  • Xml
  • Excel, CSV, etc
  • Structured emails, PDF forms, etc
  • Scanned images of structured forms

Can it read handwriting and/or text?

eCAPTURE was originally designed and developed for this and can still be supplied with an ICR/OCR capture service for structured and semi-structured documents, with a 100% content capture guarantee. If our technology cannot read something that is visible to the human eye, that’s our problem, not yours. False positives are eliminated with business rules. Every image from which we capture content is subjected to 5 separate quality checks before content is transformed into structured xml, released and loaded into business processing systems.

Over the last 15 years, data has been captured from millions of:

  • Scanned images of 48-page handwritten-completed Benefit application forms
  • Semi-structured PDF LAIDs and LACIs
  • Concessionary Travel Pass applications and renewal forms
  • Blue Badge applications
  • Applications for statutory redundancy entitlements

As well as councils, companies and organisations such as PwC, KPMG, CGI, Serco, Sopra Steria, IBM, NEC Revenues & Benefits (previously known as Northgate), Capita and The Department for Business have deployed Govtech’s capture services to meet the needs of their clients.

If you have a legacy image capture requirement, contact us for an informal discussion.

eCAPTURE Benefits and webCAPTURE Revenues are hosted services, so you pay an initial set-up fee and then an annual service fee determined by the scope of services and/or web forms you require, the size of your organisation and/or the expected volume of traffic you receive.

Our standard pricing for local authorities is listed on the Digital Marketplace but, whatever fees you incur, we expect these to be substantially less than the savings you derive from automation. Govtech’s automation rates are stable and predictable; we monitor them and, as part of a cycle of continuous improvement, we share them with customers so that they can compare their performance with their peers.

This means that we can accurately predict what your savings will be. So, before you look at prices, why not ask us to do that by requesting a business case?

TELL ME MORE

WHAT OUR CUSTOMERS SAY
"You’re reducing the workload associated with each claim by 40% overnight, so your expectations should change.” Head of Income, Benefits & Exchequer Services | Croydon Council
“Getting rid of manual checking means assessors spend more time on actual assessments. The automated checking and flagging performed by eCAPTURE means that nothing important is missed or forgotten. Assessors are far more productive and this clearly helped to improve our performance from 12 days to 4 days during the first 3 months of live running.” Principal Officer (Benefits) | Dumfries & Galloway Council
“eCAPTURE offered us a solution with a guaranteed return on investment. The business case for Govtech’s eCAPTURE service made perfect sense in the form of lower claim processing costs and improved productivity. I can categorically state that the decision to invest in eCAPTURE has been a successful one." Executive Director of Finance and Business Services | Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council
WE ARE GOOD LISTENERS AND WE LIKE SOLVING PROBLEMS

How can I free up more of my resources for other priorities?

Our business is to make that happen and we are happy to discuss any problems or challenges that you face. So please don’t hesitate to get in touch and explain the problem. If we don’t already have a solution and you can show us there is a broader business case for others, we may even decide to fund the development of a new service.

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