Over time, a scattered, disunified IT architecture had been contrived; myriad systems handling individual services.

With no single source of truth, citizens and staff had limited visibility over service quality, metrics were difficult to find, improvements were difficult to make.

Legacy systems required frequent, costly, disruptive maintenance. The council’s team of customer advisors faced long loading times, long training periods, and stressful conversations with citizens searching for basic information.

Working in partnership with council stakeholders, Cranmore’s solution overcame all of these challenges.

Systems and services would be united under one programme. Customer advisors would have instant visibility. It would be fast. It would be secure. And it would be upgradable, with a future-proofed design that council could scale easily.

The answer was a new case management system using Microsoft Dynamics integrated with Agility365.

Challenge brief

Cranmore’s first challenge was to understand the council’s existing system, processes, and services.

Once established, the next stage would find a solution to ease the strain on its customer services team and improve the experience of citizens.

This required an initial Discovery phase.

A complete picture of each system could be created showing how all integrations and processes.

London Borough of Bexley, like most local authorities, provides a huge range of vital services for the local community, many requiring its own system and process.

These services include housing, social care, deceased animal removal, and many others.

With grammar schools in the area, the council was also charged with the major responsibility of administrating school transfer tests.

This service generated many customer contacts, particularly when exam results were released. It placed significant strain on the team of some 20 customer advisors.

With system queries taking up to 10 minutes at times, it was a poor experience for both staff and citizens.

Working alongside stakeholders in the council, Cranmore’s detailed Discovery process created a complete flow, a bird’s eye view of the existing processes and services.

And with the ‘As Is’ state documented in full, Cranmore – along with council stakeholders – set about creating a new product vision.

This product vision not only envisaged a new approach to these existing processes and integrations, but considered specific use cases, such as the various scenarios customer advisors faced each day.

Preparation

Using the now established product vision, Cranmore created a proposal in partnership with the council.

This proposal set out the roadmap and backlog of requirements needed to achieve the minimum viable product (MVP).

Cranmore’s ASSURED Agile methodology now came into play. The designated project manager (PM) assigned User Story points to each requirement in the backlog, grouping these into functional releases.

These releases were then prioritised into seven sprints, and a development project Scrum team was assembled.

Execution

With the development team and sprint timetable ready, work commenced on 30 September 2024.

The team involved were:

• Steven Graham – Solution Architect
• Niall Boyle – Developer
• Michael Shorten – Developer
• Toby Black – Developer
• Stuart Collinson – Developer
• Chris Meja – Test Manager
• Heather McCook – Project Manager and Operations Director

Each User Story progressed through the swim lanes, managed through Jira, moving from development to testing.

This Jira board – as in all Cranmore’s projects – was fully available to the client, who could check the status of tickets throughout the development cycle.

Daily standups were held with the development team, product owner, and project manager during each two-week sprint, ensuring progress was on course.

In line with the ASSURED Agile methodology, each sprint concluded with a review. This involved Cranmore’s team and stakeholders from London Borough of Bexley.

The sessions saw demonstrations of each functional release. Stakeholders could not only see the progress for themselves but ensure the product’s functionality was meeting – or exceeding – expectations.

These sprint milestones also included a User Acceptance Testing phase to ensure each release was satisfactorily completed.

So not only was progress on delivery fully documented and transparent, the process also provided every opportunity for collaboration throughout.

The project culminated with the creation of the all-important single source of truth, based in Microsoft Dynamics, and providing a wealth of benefits (see Results for detail).

Council data was migrated to a new CRM, facilitating the tracking all cases, while the new system removed reliance on legacy systems.

Complex forms were migrated to Cranmore’s proprietary Agility365 platform. Fully integrated with Microsoft Dynamics, Agility365 provided an important level of flexibility, alongside the security the council needed.

Result

On Go-Live, the new Microsoft Dynamics delivered a multitude of advantages, efficiencies, and cost savings.

Firstly, for staff, it removed the need to check multiple systems. This slashed call times, eased training of new staff, and vastly reduced the stress of finding information from multiple sources.

Instant information access for customer services staff was now a reality.

It offered pre-population of fields on forms, creating additional efficiencies, and eliminated the duplication of customer accounts and data.

Through Microsoft Dynamics, a comprehensive dashboard was also deployed. This provided real-time updates of case status, which were available to the whole team.

This offered team-wide visibility over which advisor each case was assigned to and their next steps.

It transformed the experience for both contact centre staff and Bexley residents alike.

Secondly, the new system offered tangible benefits for the council’s IT stack.

Software and security risks were now mitigated, while the implementation of Agility365 meant complex forms were now available, providing the council with more control over their data.

Thirdly, comprehensive training and support were provided by Cranmore to ensure the systems were operating fluidly and securely.

This was a hugely successful project for London Borough of Bexley.

Cranmore was delighted to have been selected as partner to contribute to delivering an excellent experience for Bexley residents.

With the new Microsoft Dynamics system providing a modern standard of service for this important council, Cranmore is looking forward to our next project.