New Forest District Council

New Forest District Council Logo

New Forest District Council e-enables vital customer services and HR processes through AchieveForms' integration with Agresso and Anite.

Located in the New Forest national park in the south of England, the New Forest District Council services the municipal needs of their 169,331 residents.

Business Need

In 2005, ambitious Priority Outcome targets outlined by the Government meant local authorities in the UK had to revise some existing paper-based processes for vital public services. These targets basically asked councils to become more 'e-focussed'.

Government targets were not the only reason that drove New Forest District Council to search for e-solutions. The Council wanted to cost save through partnership and share the development for their form processes. A major goal was to create a self-service channel on their website.

Business needs did not just focus on the public, existing HR form driven processes needed reworking as well.

Solution

To successfully address e-Government targets, web service channels and HR objectives, New Forest implemented several software solutions;

  • AchieveForms, an online forms package from Business Web Software,
  • Anite@Work, an IT workflow solution specialist from Anite, and
  • AgressoHR, a Human Resource system from Agresso

A key factor to the success of the Council's process overhaul was AchieveForms' tight integration with these packages.

The first integrated service for the public was through AchieveForms and Anite@Work.

To pay a bill;

  1. the Customer would navigate to the Council Tax Page, select 'pay a bill' and then choose DD as a method of payment.
  2. At this point, AchieveForms is launched (the form is branded within New Forest's style guidelines and sits in the web page).
  3. During the completion of the form, several lookups and validations are performed, so that the correct information is being recorded.
  4. At the end of the process, the form is submitted, an email is sent to the Customer and a PDF is sent to the Council Officer to complete the transaction (by instructing bank of DD details).

The second integrated process for internal use was through AchieveForms and AgressoHR. Using AchieveForms as the front-end to their HR processes enhanced the functionality already offered by AgressoHR. AchieveForms provided flexibility of the user interface enabling the council to configure the process exactly to their business and user needs and yet retain business agility.