Business Info - issue 145

businessinfomag.uk magazine 12 SOFTWARE As a museum and cultural hub that attracts visitors from across the world, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC) prides itself on the cleanliness of its streets and the efficiency of its waste collection function – as do its residents. With its large number of old, narrow and busy streets precluding the implementation of tried-and-tested waste efficiency improvements, such as bigger bins and reduced collections, London’s smallest borough is very dependent on providing a rapid response to the 30,000 requests and reports it receives from the public each year. This was made hard by time- consuming paper-based processes, including the printing of documents by siloed systems, manual sorting into trays, collection by enforcement officers with clipboards and the typing up of handwritten notes at the end of the day. RBKC realised that improving these processes would enable it to deliver massive efficiency gains and to do so it selected a low-code solution, Liberty Create, that could be seamlessly More than four fifths of businesses lack the skills or resources to develop employee-facing mobile apps in- house, according to a new study by mobile data capture specialist WorkMobile. This shows that while employee-facing mobile apps play a key role in most enterprise mobility strategies, with 91% of businesses making use of them, 85% are unable to develop apps successfully in-house. More than one third (38%) of IT teams say they are overstretched and don’t have the time or capacity to develop their own apps, with a further 36% admitting that they don’t have the coding skills and expertise required. Almost half (47%) say they have found it difficult to recruit employees with the right mobile development expertise. WorkMobile found that even among businesses that are able to develop their own apps, many have struggled to do so successfully: n 63% have experienced problems developing apps within a particular timeframe; n 56% have been forced to abandon the development of an app before completion; n 36% have struggled to develop apps within a designated budget; and n 30% have struggled to develop apps for a range of operating systems and devices. Faced with these difficulties, 64% of CIOs say they would be interested in using a no-coding mobile app toolkit as an alternative to developing apps in-house themselves. Almost half (44%) believe no-coding mobile apps would reduce the workload for their team; a third think they would allow teams to implement mobile solutions more quickly; and 29% think they would make it easier to stay within budget. www.workmobilesolutions.com Wasteful processes binned with low-code Mobile app development beyond most businesses integrated with existing systems, including its Netcall contact centre solution. It trained up an in-house builder to work alongside the Netcall team and within five months the first phase of the low-code implementation, which automated 80% of waste collection- related tasks (by volume), had gone live. Now, residents or staff can log any waste collection-related request into a single system, with all information stored in a central database. The service request is automatically assigned and sent to the mobile device of the correct contractor who can get to the site faster and update the system in real-time. This has led to a saving of 60 minutes per officer, per day.With 18 officers in total, this has effectively increased the capacity of the officer team by the equivalent of two full-time employees. A second implementation While its waste management processes were being improved, RBKC set about enhancing the customer journey across other service processes. For many years, the council has been using Netcall’s Liberty Converse contact centre solution to handle more than 450,000 calls annually, across 23 different lines. It had already used voice bots to automate some routine requests but wanted to go much further by giving residents a choice of communication channels and the option to contact the council at any time. In a second implementation of low-code technology, it used Liberty Create to develop a self-service portal – MyRBKC – that integrates workflows with back-end systems and enables residents to raise queries and reports on any device, at any time. If they need to follow up with a message or a call, contact centre agents can view the case history within the portal, so callers don’t have to repeat details. The journey to digital is never complete, but because Liberty Create is low-code, RBKC can quickly make changes to processes and create new solutions now and in the future. To this end, RKBC is now upskilling staff and building in-house expertise to extend the time and cost savings achieved in these two implementations to all its internal processes. www.netcall.com Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is using low-code technology to transform waste collection and other public services