Welcome to the Business Improvement &Transformation community site. This site has been produced to bring together some of the outputs from the Business Improvement & Transformation Special Interest Group (formerly BPM,WG3) and useful information from other organisations.

This working group is led by Sue Beveridge from Islington Council (sue.beveridge@islington.gov.uk) and Ange Moore from Dudley is the deputy lead.

We hope the site has become an invaluable source of information around Business Improvement &Transformation and associated subjects.

Business Process Improvement - designing accessible customer services

The remit of the group continues from previous years …….but has been re-focused to explore business improvement from an ‘outside in’ approach; “from the customers perspective.

The Business Improvement Group includes members from across the country with a wide range of backgrounds and expertise and we are actively looking for new members. There is much work to be done in breaking down the silos in service delivery and to work across boundaries - we would very much like to work with colleagues from across the border in Scotland…

The Group met recently on Tuesday, 17th July in Birmingham, to discuss the proposals for re-focusing our work in the light of the emerging transformational government agenda. . During the morning session members were asked to consider and agree two initial proposals around developing and delivering a range of practical tools that will assist local authorities to deliver best practice in process improvement. Members were also advised that deliverables would be developed over the following three phases

Phase One

To develop a ‘business process start up pack’, that will help local authority practitioners to identify the relevant organizations, partnerships and customer touch points that will need to be taken into consideration when designing customer centric services. The starter kit will help to inform shared services agendas. It will also allow organizations to benchmark, measure, evidence and compare levels of risk for achieving LAA outputs in the CAA returns.

To develop an on-line calculator to measure and evidence the cost benefit of any process improvement. The calculator will complement the cost to serve work that is currently being carried out by consultants on behalf of the CLG. This proposal was supported by a presentation by Simon Daisley, from profusion International who is currently working with Hackney Council to develop a service improvement programme.

Phase Two

To focus on the customer journey into public sector organisations and will examine how we can proactively and efficiently deliver the correct package of services, including central government and voluntary agency services, to meet the needs of our customers.

Phase 3

Will start to explore the possibility of developing a ‘starter’ Change Management monitoring tool which will help organizations identify the issues, obstacles and risk levels of obstacles when implementing cultural change. The tool will also help organizations to develop operational and strategic action plans to manage the demise of these obstacles!

In the afternoon Paul Davidson, Director of Local Government Standards Body gave a very interesting and thought provoking presentation about the benefits of developing a national standards framework to support business transformation across the public sector whilst maintaining local identity and branding.

The meeting concluded with a challenging workshop that further explored and drilled down into the points raised in the various presentations.

The group concluded the way forward was to commission a number of ‘task and finish’ groups to specify the work packages needed to achieve the various outcomes.

It was also stressed that the group would pro-actively engage with other national, regional, professional and academia groups, who are involved in similar areas of work, to try ensure the that best practice is shared as widely as possible.

This is a dynamic group working that is actively seeking to advance knowledge in key areas of business improvement and the sharing of best practice and support.

Much can be achieved - if you are interested in business improvement and customer experience bring your expertise, knowledge and stamina to share with a group of enthusiastic peers.

Many exciting challenges lie ahead!

Please find below a link to the Business Transformation forum which has the presentations from the Business Improvement Working Group meeting on 17th July at the The Birmingham and Midland Institute. http://www.esd.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?t=8514

The presentation by Simon Daisley re: Developing a service improvement programme will be available shortly.