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Collaborating To Transform Advice Services

By Morgan Killick

Morgan Killick of ESP Projects describes the process, successes and lessons learnt from a project to provide a client booking system for Sheffield’s advice agencies.

The need and aims

In the light of the Office for Civil Society’s (OCS) agenda of ‘Transforming Local Infrastructure’ and indeed wider funding pressures on the sector, the need for collaboration has never been more apparent. This kind of challenge lends itself well to the world of IT, and shared IT systems seem to be a natural extension - or in some cases even a necessary precursor - to this type of organisational change.

Back in 2010, ESP Projects was successful in winning a tender from the CLASSY Advice Consortium, 29 not-for-profit advice agencies, such as CABs, Law Centres and Independent Advice Centres in South Yorkshire. With a brief to “improve and align backroom IT services across the consortium”, their tender called for a specific system or solution to provide a single access point for clients to the entire network of advice centres, the idea being that a client could walk into any centre and book in an appointment to see an adviser irrespective of the centre they worked from.

The aim was to both improve efficiency in general and to deliver a specific Legal Services Commission (LSC) contract which required closer collaboration than the existing, hugely time consuming system of ‘ringing round’ the other centres to see if they could accept a referral.

The tender was well written in that it was prescriptive but only moderately so. It had a firm budget (£7,500) and clearly delineated the stages that were envisaged, namely:  research possible solutions, report on the options, implement a system, and provide training on it. Despite the tight deadline, this gave me confidence in the commissioning bodies’ project management skills and also demonstrated their willingness to play an active role in facilitating the work.

The challenges

An initial meeting clearly identified the key challenges involved:

• The principle challenge was about referring clients
• Each agency has different IT infrastructure/systems and skills
• It was vital that no confidential client data was stored or transferred
• There was some resistance to change and it was important that all agencies were consulted
• The change would necessitate the adoption of new non-IT processes and procedures
• Some contenders for solutions had already been identified
• It would be of strategic benefit if the system was scalable and approved by Advice UK

The project team

Following on from the meeting, a steering group was formed of representatives of 6 agencies and staff from the consortium. From my point of view, having this group was crucial to the success of the project as it allowed a straightforward approach to decision making and moreover ensured that a representative sample of users were actively feeding their concerns  into the system requirements. Furthermore, the group conceded at the outset that there was a need to reform non-IT processes and procedures in tandem with the adoption of the IT solution, and had the ‘clout’ to carry this agenda forward.

The research phase

An IT infrastructure audit was a mandatory part of the delivery and this was carried out partly onsite and partly remotely. It was clear however from the outset that there were diverse systems already in use and that standardising these would meet with resistance. In retrospect, the audit was perhaps not necessary but it certainly did help with the consultation element and moreover reinforced the idea in my mind that some kind of ‘overlay’ to existing systems, rather than imposing a replacement to them, was the right way forward.

The research therefore focussed on web-based software that could be used just for the referrals rather than every booking for every adviser, i.e. a system where each adviser could upload their specialisms and selected ‘free time slots’ which others could then search for and book into. This was now quite a tight brief, and the task of delivering it was also helped because the commissioning body had already carried out some basic research and identified some possible candidates.

Assessing the options

Five prospective systems arising from the research were tested for basic functionality. From this a set of detailed ‘possible features’ was extrapolated and combined with user-driven requests to form a fairly comprehensive set of genuinely feasible system requirements. This list was then discussed with the steering group and prioritised according to their needs. In this way, the full evaluation of the software was carried out after this consultation, and by way of appraising each solution against this ‘signed off’ list. This method also has the advantage of delivering absolute clarity to stakeholders about the functions they will – and won’t – see in the final delivery.

This detailed preparation helped make the recommendation easy. There was a clear front-runner in the Nellbooker system, which was within budget, developed by the legal sector and was already undergoing approval from Advice UK. It was also at a stage where the developer was happy to undertake a small number of customisations that benefitted the overall product. Naturally it was fortuitous that this candidate happened to be at exactly this stage of development, but even without this bit of luck, it was clearly the best option when measured against the agreed requirements.

Implementing and training

Thereafter remained the implementation and training phase. It was here that a significant part of the work was conducted, involving not only me as the consultant but also staff from the commissioning body. All too often, training is an afterthought, but in this case we obtained a (free) training version of Nellbooker to play with and worked together on a comprehensive training package based around realistic scenarios. All key users were put through the course over several sessions in a hired IT suite. The training also served to reinforce in the minds of the users the need to adopt the new policies and procedures that had been designed to accompany the IT element to the project.

The system went live a few weeks after the training and is now in use in all of the agencies. It has allowed them to make referrals directly to each other and deliver a more efficient and indeed seamless ‘client journey’ whilst preserving the freedom of individual agencies to work in the way they chose for their own clients.

The timescale however slipped fairly substantially during the project, albeit with the consent of the steering group. This was in part due to the difficulty of arranging multi-stakeholder meetings, partly due to waiting for system modifications and also because both the agreement and introduction of new procedures took some time too. Thankfully, the original deadlines were fiscal rather than operational and even though the project took 7 months in entirety, it was still completed in ample time to deliver the LSC contract that it was commissioned for.

Success factors

The work, though challenging, was very successful. Well over a year after implementation, the solution remains firmly embedded and widely used. In summary, the success factors in the project were:

• A project brief that was clear and restricted to a single IT intervention
• A commissioning body that actively wanted to participate in the delivery of the project
• A steering group with consultative and executive powers
• An early acknowledgement that the IT system had to be paralleled by process/policy/procedural reforms undertaken separately
• The creation of a detailed, prioritised and realistic  set of  system requirements, which was then ‘signed off’ by the Steering Group
• The fact that the open market could provide a solution and a bit of luck that the provider was willing to undertake some minor modifications
• The creation of a comprehensive, ‘real world’ training programme
• The commissioning body allowing for sufficient time (many months) between conceiving an idea for collaboration and seeing it adopted fully into practise