Roads, housing, education, social care, and waste management are all managed by Norfolk County Council, a top-tier local government authority operating across multiple silos. When they wanted to use automation to help save money and increase efficiency, and ultimately return money to citizens, they turned to Blue Prism. Now, the team is celebrating ground-breaking automation success, winning the Best Newcomer in EMEA in the Blue Prism Customer Excellence Awards.

Challenge

Operating in a multi-agency setting, Norfolk County Council was seeking solutions to eradicate inconsistent data, improve efficiency and increase cost savings. Social workers were spending much of their time on administrative chores rather than focusing on direct care for citizens. Direct care is key in situations like locating missing children. Each day, the police send missing children reports to Norfolk County. A social worker had to match the names of missing children with their caseworkers, so they could act quickly. But this process, which needed to be done fast, required access to multiple documents and the constant checking of email. And it took an average of 20 hours per month per caseworker.

On the finance and back-office side of the Council’s business, a tax-related payroll process was convoluted and time-consuming with a 30-step process that added up to 134 hours of work per month. Each month, data had to be submitted for roughly 300 employees—any late or inaccurate reporting would negatively impact both the Council and the employee.

Solution

Norfolk County Council turned to a team of Blue Prism digital workers to help staff tackle important, but repetitive, tasks. The tax-related payroll process has been turned over to digital workers. They quickly process data, helping to guarantee employees are paid on time and that their taxes are recorded accurately. The time to complete the process has been reduced from five days to just two.

Digital workers are also helping to expedite locating of missing children. The new process will ensure cases can be investigated quicker, in hopes kids can be found sooner. Rather than chasing down emails manually, digital workers will automatically read the email, take the case, compile a compact report, and assign it to a caseworker.

Norfolk County Council is fast becoming a more effective organization by successfully returning its employees to the point of contact with the citizen. With their “get-it-done” motto, they have scaled their intelligent automation program with impressive speed. In the last eight months alone, 21 processes have been automated.