Monmouthshire County Council

The Customer 

Monmouthshire County Council is a small local authority located in rural Wales, headquartered in the town of Usk. The current unitary authority was created in 1996 and covers the eastern three-fifths of the historic county of Monmouthshire. Employing around 4,500 people across its community hubs and offices, its main priorities are ensuring everyone has access to a great education, protecting vulnerable people, and supporting a strong economy. 

The Challenge

Monmouthshire Council approached Hitachi Solutions having identified challenges within its Community Links team and the way it operates. The team is responsible for representing citizens across the council, dealing with a range of issues including mental health, loneliness, cost of living, domestic violence and ensuring access to educational resources. It previously operated using a complex Excel document containing every interaction and citizen’s details, which meant the council had no central view of each citizen and lacked the ability to analyse historic data of previous interactions, service provisions or support systems. 

The inability to track and manage interactions between support and communications, for both employee reference and citizens, led to issues surrounding GDPR, missing data fields and information being overwritten or deleted. The spreadsheet was unscalable, unmanageable and not user-friendly, and the combination of issues slowed processes for dealing with referrals and interactions, causing delays in waiting lists and accessing support. A disconnect was present between the services employees wanted to provide and those they were able to provide given the data available. For example, when data had been deleted and a mobile number was missing, the citizen would not be contactable, resulting in them missing out on the support required. On a strategic level, the rapidly growing council found that a spreadsheet could not support its expanding needs, so it needed an efficient solution that could support growth, expand in line with operations and improve visibility across departments, and that was flexible and able to be changed in house quickly. 

The Solution

Hitachi Solutions understood the requirements of the council and implemented Microsoft Power Platform, a flexible, user-friendly solution that allows the council to provide an improved, professional service. The solution provides traceability, with a full user journey mapped visually to see what the citizen has asked and their outcomes with time stamps. The ability to reflect on this to identify gaps within its services and monitor their impact, coupled with the secure data, has led the council to improve its services. 

Since going live in April 2022, 386 people have been supported via the new platform, a significant increase in productivity compared with the number of citizens that could be supported via the spreadsheet. The platform provides quick and accessible reporting systems that were previously conducted manually, and the data gained allows the council to manage demand for its services and allocate resources and availability effectively. The visual representation of the full customer journey allows communication timelines to be drawn, identifying the last point of contact, the future contact and any activities in the meantime. For example, a citizen who is being supported during a period of isolation may be referred to attend a community group, noted within their profile so that the council can quickly identify previous support requirements if the same citizen asks for help in the future. 

User experience within the council was also a priority. Each user within the Community Links team can personalise their dashboard depending on their focus, displaying visuals of recent reports and figures and allowing easy identification of where the majority of referrals are coming from. Booked appointments are automatically synced to calendars, and flexibility is achieved through the personalisation of the terminology and languages used. With a much smoother process attained, the team now feels it is in a process of continuous learning from insights it did not have access to before, as Power Apps allow it to train staff and evolve the system as it grows, with a full directory of contacts, suppliers and accounts that is constantly updated so teams can see all resources quickly and trust they are accurate. 

We would like to express our appreciation to Hitachi Solutions for their outstanding work on this project. Throughout the entire process, they have maintained a can-do attitude and provided exceptional support. We look forward to continuing our partnership with them and exploring new opportunities to improve our services.

Why Hitachi Solutions

Monmouthshire valued a partner that understood its requirements and delivered a flexible, user-friendly Power Platform solution the council can change in house as it grows. Throughout the project, Hitachi Solutions maintained a can-do attitude and provided exceptional support, laying the foundation for an ongoing partnership. 

The Benefits 

• Flexibility: personalisation of dashboards depending on priorities 
• Traceability: the full customer journey is easily identified to speed up the support process 
• Single view: a full view of each citizen in one space, rather than cross-referencing various Excel documents 
• Efficiency: the reporting process is now partly automated, easily accessible and involves fewer manual processes 
• 386 people supported since April 2022, with secure data addressing previous GDPR risks and the ability to train staff and evolve the system in house 

What’s Next? 

The initial project started as a system of record for a small group of users within the Community Links team. Monmouthshire Council is now using current feedback to expand this to a wider user group, including the Digital Lending team, allowing others to reap the benefits of the platform and to signpost activities and forward requests to wider teams. The platform’s users will increase as the council evolves, with adaptability and flexibility at the forefront, and Monmouthshire also hopes to expand the project to other third-sector organisations within the region. The aim is to have other organisations, including libraries, able to provide referrals to the council and forward requests, managing the process on a wider scale and supporting citizens with a further scope of requests.