The vision for Scotland's National CRM Project - co-ordinated by the Improvement Service's Customer First Programme and West Lothian Council as lead council - is: " To increase the intensity of collaboration around Customer Relationship Management across Scottish local government that will result in demonstrable improvements in customer and organisation outcomes."

In support of the vision, a nationally-negotiated framework agreement's been reached with Lagan Technologies Ltd that allows for the deployment of Lagan's Enterprise Case Management solution to improve a council's service delivery capability.

The agreement's open to all Scottish councils and creates a Best Value solution that means Scottish Councils can benefit from a very attractive offer that would not otherwise be accessible to an individual council.

Of necessity, the National CRM Project's current focus is supporting councils using or thinking of using the Lagan solution. However, the project's focus extends beyond supporting Lagan users and is supplier agnostic to reflect that Scotland's councils use a range of CRM platforms including Oracle ( e.g. South Lanarkshire, East Renfrewshire etc ), Northgate ( e.g. Aberdeenshire ), Graham Technology ciboodle ( e.g. Falkirk and West Dunbartonshire ), in-house developed solutions ( e.g. Fife ) as well as other proprietary solutions.

With Scottish Government funding, a national co-ordination role's been appointed to the project, Hilary Horton, based in the Improvement Service, to act as a co-ordination resource available to all councils irrespective of their chosen CRM platform.

Growing Partnership

Ten Scottish councils are now using Lagan ( see coloured map below ) which means that a combined population of 1.5 million citizens is having their transactions, service and information requests handled through the Lagan solution.

Two more councils are in the advanced stages of signing up to the framework agreement; a further 3 councils, in the process of appraising options for their CRM platform going forward, are examining closely the national framework agreement's potential to meet their needs.

National CRM Project - a key part of the national jigsaw

The project's purposes include:

• Sharing development and expertise
• Sharing knowledge, standards and processes
• Saving costs that can be used to improve customer service
• De-risking and shortening project timescales - reduce the learning curve
• Co-ordinating nationally and reducing the impact and risks associated with working across organisational boundaries
• Developing critical masses able to influence political and financial support

• Working to Build Success

For those councils adopting the Lagan solution, an Away Day for the National CRM Project was held over 21st - 22nd January 2008 at Dunblane Hydro. The event is one of a number of planned activities to help deliver an effective partnership nationally that supports and complements local delivery.

The Away Day's aims were focused on building relationships, sharing ideas and gathering feedback on how the teams can operate at a high performance level, locally and nationally.

The event was attended by a number of Chief Executives from the participating councils, the local and national project teams and Lagan's Scotland First Delivery Team together with representatives from other Scottish Lagan users.

As keynote speaker, Alex Linkston, SOLACE Office-bearer and Chief Executive, West Lothian Council, set out the project's vision, emphasised how the project can leverage the creative capacity available to Scottish councils and how it can serve as a model for collaborative working.

Delegates also enjoyed a refreshing presentation from, Stephen Gray, Programme Director, West Sussex Accessible Services Partnership, an award winning combination of district, borough and county councils on:

Their journey

• Their success factors
• The pitfalls to avoid

Through a range of presentations as well as individual and team activities and challenges, the intended outcomes for the Away Day event were that:

• each person has an overview of the whole national project, its objectives and their own
• each person understands their role in the project
• each person appreciates the preferred communication styles of others as well as their own
• the project teams get to know one another, building relationships and trust
• the project teams identify shortcuts to successful implementation, using the experience of other partnership projects
• what success looks like for the project - locally and nationally - is clearly defined

Building on a solid base....

Refreshingly, delegates' feedback on the Away Day was extremely positive; when asked to rate the event in terms of providing value to them as an individual, delegates' scores averaged 8.1 ( where 10 was highest ).

When asked to rate the event in terms of providing value to the National CRM Project, delegates' scores averaged 8.3 ( where 10 was highest ).

Some Learning Points

Usefully, the event highlighted a number of areas where some more clarity would be welcome including:

• Describing the links between the various project groups at national and local level, their remits and decision-making processes
• Update the communications plan to show how the project's broader scope is beyond solely councils using Lagan
• Maintaining sight of other projects/activities e.g. Shared Services Diagnostic that might impact on the National CRM Project and communicate linkages

We plan during this quarter to respond and address this feedback.

The event slides and feedback analysis are available on our website. The Improvement Service acknowledges the support and participation of the speakers Alex Linkston, Stephen Gray, Jim Kinney and Robert Clubb, the delegates and the facilitators, Clare Moore of Business Jigsaw and Bruce Milroy of Ethos Consulting.