In the Spotlight: The City of Edinburgh Council

The City of Edinburgh Council is one of the largest local authorities in the UK, with more than 17,000 staff providing services to nearly 500,000 people. Like many local authorities across the UK, the Council is facing a range of challenges across its portfolio of services, including budget pressures, increasing demand for services and rising customer expectations.

Challenge

In 2019, working in partnership with CGI, the Council began implementing Totalmobile’s mobile working solution to digitally transform the operations of its Social Housing Repairs & Maintenance service. Through the digitisation of their previously paper-based processes they have access to real-time information and are now able to direct employees to the most urgent repairs each day.

Today, the project is now into its third phase of value delivery, finding new ways to improve efficiency and service quality through a continuous approach to digital transformation.

In earlier phases of the transformation, there was a manual process to convert contact centre requests from tenants into actionable tasks for social housing repairs operatives. Call handlers had to look up Schedule of Rates, key it into the housing system, and then re-key it into the CRM system, before scheduling the task to a member of staff in the field.

Tenants were limited to contact centre opening hours when seeking to request a repair. This process generated additional administration effort for the Council, and inconvenience for tenants, who in today’s climate, expect a seamless digital experience. The council relied on manual processes to record key information regarding vulnerable people in social housing. Call handlers would key free type into the housing system to be retrospectively reported on.

Solution

Using modern open APIs, the Council integrated Totalmobile with its citizen portal, case management and housing systems. Leveraging existing systems meant the Council were able to enhance their service offering without investing in new technologies or platforms.

Social housing tenants can now log simple requests 24 hours a day and 365 days a year, selecting a time for the repair that suits them best.

Outcomes and next steps

Since implementation the new integrated solution, the Council has experienced an increase in digital channel use of 15 percent, allowing the contact centre team to handle winter call volumes without additional resources.

Service users now have access to report issues at a time to suit them, and the council is able to prioritise repairs to vulnerable people, based on accurate information, which is provided by the tenants themselves. The software has allowed the council to modernise service delivery, streamline processes, delivery a better way of working to all staff and increased the quality of service for their tenants.

“Our housing repairs service is so vital with workers helping thousands of people to live safely and comfortably in their homes. Adopting Totalmobile is helping us to digitise and continuously develop the service for our tenants and members of our workforce, who are often visiting different parts of the city in one shift,” said councillor Jane Meagher, housing convener.

“We’ve found that operatives are now able to go about their day without having to return to the office to handle paperwork, as they can find out information about the homes they’re visiting quickly and easily while on the move.

“From a risk and compliance point of view, we’re reassured that data on our homes is very secure and held in one central point. Plus, the new smart damp sensors we’re installing will be plugged-in to the Totalmobile system, so that repair staff can be allocated to attend homes automatically, where needed. This will support our ongoing work to improve the condition of our 20,000 homes and our response to repairs.”

City of Edinburgh Council will be rolling out the Totalmobile flagship Connect solution to its Empty Homes team next. Connect encompasses work order management and mobile, dynamic scheduling.

Ultimately, the Council is considering fully using Totalmobile as an enterprise mobile working capability by rolling it out to more field-based services across the organisation. This could enable the benefits of mobile working to be experienced in all service areas.