We’re delighted to announce that, after a 4-year interlude, the City of Wolverhampton Council has chosen Govtech once again to deliver digital process automation for Council Tax and Benefits. In the intervening period, Wolverhampton separately helped Govtech initially to design, and was the first to deploy, Govtech’s Universal Credit Digital Service (UCDS). Now, in a decision which reverses the switch to a competitive offering, Wolverhampton will re-adopt the full suite of Govtech digital process automation services in Revenues & Benefits.
Wolverhampton has been a Govtech customer for a continuous period of over 10 years and we’re thrilled to now welcome them back as webCAPTURE & eCAPTURE users. The Wolverhampton team are a pleasure to work with and we can’t wait to see their online take-up and automation levels compete with the best councils.
Grass with a different shade of green
Four years ago, online take-up in Wolverhampton was disappointing, most probably due to inadequate promotion and publicity for online self-service, together with a reluctance to restrict and close down the old channels. The Department was persuaded to try something else, with ICT promising that a new system would improve online take-up and a new supplier promising to “do everything Govtech can do”.
Online self-service levels did indeed improve, helped to a considerable extent by the closure of council offices during the pandemic. But the Department itself saw few benefits from that because automation was limited to the simplest transactions. For four years, the Department saw rising levels of online self-service but with less automation than it used to enjoy from Govtech.
Despite more people self-serving, workload in Revs & Bens kept rising and a seemingly endless stream of pandemic-related priorities meant that keeping up with day-to-day tasks became a permanent struggle. A solution which was meant to reduce workload by increasing online self-service resulted in no reduction of officers tied up in checking and completing work items ‘left-over’ from automation.
‘We need to automate everything that we can’
In a competitive G-Cloud procurement exercise, the Department made its priorities clear.
Having previously used webCAPTURE and eCAPTURE, and with UCDS completely automating the matching, cleansing and filtering of thousands of daily Notifications from the DWP, confidence in Govtech was very high. Visits and conversations with neighbouring councils highlighted the extent to which other councils were realising benefits from far greater levels of stable, predictable, rules-based automation.
“We chose Govtech as there are no surprises on costs and no ‘extras’; we already knew how good they are at customer service; automation rates are high and predictable and there is complete transparency on performance with automation rates published and shared by all councils. Their ability to offer what we needed in Revenues and Benefits as a complete package meant Govtech was the best value solution.”
Tracey Richards, Head of Revenues & Benefits, City of Wolverhampton Council
Delivering exactly what our customers need
We say it time and again: we will never overpromise what can be achieved with automation. But nor will we undersell it. We set realistic expectations, backed by demonstratable evidence of proven customer success. Councils are often taken aback by the high automation rates that we obtain. These are stable and predictable – we’ve been doing R&B automation for over 15 years. We want to persuade local authorities that they can have higher expectations and aspirations – if they work with the right partner.
“Wolverhampton’s decision to choose the complete package of Govtech digital process automation services for Revenues & Benefits will reinforce our efforts to persuade councils that they should have higher expectations and aspirations for automation.”
Andrew Melvin, Managing Director, Govtech Solutions
We are delighted to see how the next chapter with City of Wolverhampton Council unfolds. And from us all at Govtech, we are thrilled to welcome you back!
