North Tyneside Council is now seeing measurable improvements to its business processes since implementing Orchard’s AccuServ repairs and maintenance software last year.
In April 2019, North Tyneside Council completed a two-year project to bring their construction and responsive repairs services back in house after previously outsourcing them. The council was primarily looking for a cloud-based system that would offer flexibility in the long term. As many processes were being created from scratch, selecting a system which could operate effectively out of the box was a priority.
Adam Hagg, customer interface and service improvement manager, North Tyneside Council, said, “We shortlisted a number of suppliers and carried out on-site demonstrations to get a better understanding of their products. We felt that Orchard offered the best combination off the shelf suitability and the ability to be configured to meet local demands.
“One size doesn’t fit all anymore, and we needed to be able to personalise the service we offered to reflect the needs of the area and the community. We felt that Orchard was the best choice because the other options came with fixed sets of features and no options for us to tailor the platform to our own needs over time.”
After selecting Orchard as the successful supplier in September 2018, the council immediately moved into a rapid implementation, taking just six months to get the new system up and running in time for its launch in April 2019.
Hagg said, “Working with Orchard’s development staff, our small in-house implementation team not only developed and deployed the repairs and maintenance system but also carried out the necessary training across the 400 employees who’d be using the new system.
“We’ve been able to automate many processes that we did manually before, such as risk assessments and allowing sub-contractors to sign off work. The automation processes are helping us improve the way we share information with our customers too – rather than letters and emails, we’ve introduced a system of auto-generated text messages, so tenants receive confirmation when a repair is registered, a reminder and then an alert when our team is on their way to the repair.
“This has made a massive difference to the customer journey, reduced no-access appointments and allowed us to really listen to what our customers want and reflect that in the service we give them.”
