Supporting Sandwell in lockdown and beyond

We’ve supported Sandwell’s Revenues and Benefits team since 2002. We also scan their inbound and outbound mail to deliver a truly paperless service. 

The council’s 2018 ‘Workplace Vision’ set out plans for fewer buildings and agile working, which meant major change was needed elsewhere. In Housing, documents had built up in old properties, making them hard to locate and unsafe to store. The HR department had so many paper files they needed to reinforce a floor to take their weight.

The solution was to convert the existing contract for NEC Document Management to apply corporate-wide, with the HR and Housing teams next in line.

HR and Housing make the move

The HR team was first to go live in November 2019. We’d already scanned all historical and live files, so they were available from day one. Everyone in the 100-strong department was able to work differently and soon introduced improved self-service functions.

The focus then moved to Housing. The imminent closure of buildings – unrelated to lockdown – already meant a lightning-fast implementation. Transformation Officer Sonia Ward explains:

“We went from scoping visits, where we showed NEC the volume and location of the files, to having 350 users live within eight weeks. Lockdown happened in the middle of that period, so we also had to ditch plans for in-person training and create self-service guides and an email support desk.”

By the end of March 2020, Housing staff were able to access all essential files from home. “We’d already decided on NEC Document Management, and lockdown made its benefits crystal clear,” says Sonia. “There’s just no way we could have worked effectively without it.”