The ability to consistently deliver a range of good quality services is a challenge in any sector, but Public Sector organisations operate under some unique circumstances making this more difficult than most.
Local Authorities are responsible for the delivery of a whole range of benefits and services some of which are dependent on a number of parameters that change based on an individual citizen’s situation. This coupled with legislative and policy changes and the constant threat of funding cuts makes it extremely difficult to ensure the ‘delivery of services’ continue to achieve the highest possible standards.
With this in mind we thought we would share with you five areas to look at that can help improve your service delivery performance.
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Identify problems quickly
New legislation or changes to policy guidelines can affect the way a service is administered. With the delivery of any service a series of processes need to occur that rely on a number of different technology applications working together. If one of these systems does not effectively communicate with the other you may find parts of the process falling through the gaps resulting in bottlenecks or inefficient workflows resulting in duplication of effort. Take the time to identify each critical part in a process and put in place a system that monitors these, providing visibility of where and when service issues are occurring, so that these can be identified and dealt with in as near real-time as possible.
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Better optimise your resources
Another key element of service delivery is how you allocate your resources and break down each part of the service delivery process into units of time. Do you know for example how long each task takes your administrators to complete? Have you set specific goals for task completion? If you know how long it takes to get from Point A to Point B you can look at your pool of resources and match the skills and capabilities to the task required to optimise that process and better allocate resource.
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Cut out labour intensive, manual processes
How many times have your staff come to you and said there has to be a way we can automate this? Just because a part of the process of service delivery may be particularly complex requiring input from several different technology systems, departments or people this does not mean it cannot be automated. Typically workflow applications can now be set up to send alerts and flag to the next system, person or department in the process, reminding them that the task lies with them and is unable to move on to the next stage, until completed.
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Measure and report on your service delivery
The old adage that if you can’t measure it, you can’t report on it also applies here. How do you measure the performance of your service delivery? Does it go into the real granular detail breaking down the performance of each member of staff and the number of tasks they complete in a given timeframe? If you can’t accurately track who is contributing what to your service delivery, how can you make recommendations for change and improvement?
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Provision of multi-channel service delivery
Good service delivery should facilitate a good flow of information back and forth in a timely manner. With an ever-increasing amount of social and digital channels available, how a service is administered ideally should be tailored to where the quickest most optimal outcome can be achieved. Service delivery should offer flexibility and with some careful analysis of trends and demographics, Councils should be able to communicate and deliver services on the channels best suited to the citizen and their likeliness to engage whether that’s an email, a call, using an app, by text message or social media.
We hope this quick checklist has been useful, as over the last decade we have helped many organisations tackle these issues and worked carefully with them to develop bespoke workflow and reporting applications that helps keep on top of their service delivery performance.
If you want to find out more about how we can help you please contact us on 01772 842092 or email info@destin.co.uk
