Southend-on-Sea Borough Council has recently selected Jadu and its transactional web platform, to produce an interactive and functional website as part of its ‘Delivering Excellence’ programme. The website assists in supporting the target of £15 million of savings over the next three years to 2013.
A proportion of these savings will be realised from the Return on Investment (ROI) generated from development of its online 'self service' capabilities. By making online customer interaction more efficient and easy to use it will become the 'contact point of choice' over traditional points of contact such as face to face and telephone which are cost intensive.
Nick Corrigan, Head of Customer Services, Southend on Sea Borough Council says:
We are aiming to maximise the potential of the Council's Customer Service Centre as a first contact point. By implementing an improved transactional web site, we anticipate that 35 % of telephone and face to face contacts will switch to self service through the web over the 3 year period to 2013.
A Channel Value Benchmarking exercise undertaken with SOCITM (who also use the Jadu platform), had identified the significant potential that existed to deliver major savings from the online channel. However, whilst the Council's existing web site had performed well it did not have the capability to support the 'Delivering Excellence' programme and to also provide a platform that could generate the cost savings required. A decision was therefore taken to go to competitive tender resulting in the selection of Jadu as partner to support the Delivering Excellence programme. Jadu will be providing its web transactional platforms- Jadu CMS 1.8 PHP and Jadu Galaxies to deliver the self service delivery channel; maximise customer engagement and to 'deliver excellent' services. All this will be acheived without customer face to face or telephone contact.
To ensure an integrated self service experience, Jadu will also be working with Southend on Sea Borough Council to integrate front and back office systems. The Council also has an additional ten remote web sites that provide local services to residents. Jadu Galaxies to provide the ability to provide 'non technical' CMS deployment across multiple locations.
"Jadu satisfied all the criteria that we had set. The price was good, there was one point of contact to deal with throughout implementation. Jadu also had a excellent record with SOCITM of delivering sites within local government that are either classified as meeting good practice or and are rated well in the Better Connected Report." Says Nick Corrigan Head of Customer Services
Suraj Kika, CEO, Jadu Ltd said:
"By ensuring the customers choose the web over other traditional channels, Southend on Sea Council will be able to deliver the major savings required by all Local Authorities in this time of austerity. Jadu's web transactional platform will provide the Council with a beautiful site, excellent service and the ability to generate savings. It will also provide the flexibility to deliver savings across all council partner websites."
Notes for Editors
About Southend-on-Sea Borough Council
Southend-on-Sea is a town and seaside resort in Essex, England and boasts seven miles of seafront, the longest pleasure pier in the world and a host of exciting events and festivals all year.
Southend-on-Sea Borough Council is a unitary authority which spends approximately £502m each year and employs more than 5,000 staff (including Schools). The Council speaks up for the town's interests in a number of areas, such as health, community safety, regeneration and environmental matters, and ensures that a diverse range of services are provided. These include refuse collection to every household in the borough and home care to those who need assistance.
Further information on Southend-on-Sea Borough Council can be found at: www.southend.gov.uk
About Jadu
Jadu is a leading global provider of web transactional systems, specialising in the design and development of enterprise wide websites, intranets and extranets. Jadu powers hundreds of government and private sector organisations across the world and is a leading innovator in providing customers with the tools needed to simplify and empower the web publishing and management process.
Jadu's underpinning semantic-web strategy is "to make content accessible to humans and machines". This is delivered by Jadu's innovative web transactional solutions that enable customers to organise, manage and publish their information across the enterprise. Jadu empowers organisations and users to generate a maximum return on their investment (ROI) in web technologies.
Innovation is a key driver in the ground breaking functionality delivered by Jadu solutions which include - integrated online forms, mash up page design, integrated Google search, personalisation, full statistical reporting, web standards compliance, accessibility compliance, product and catalogue management, along with a host of other web productivity tools and unparalleled support service.
Jadu was established in 2001 and has been implemented for hundreds of private and public sector organisations across the UK since its first major implementation for BERR in 2002.
