Tendring District Council
AchieveForms' integration with SharePoint and MCMS allows Tendring District Council to improve customer service.
Tendring District Council's dedication to e-solutions for their constituents is being served through their use of AchieveForms, Microsoft SharePoint and Microsoft Content Manager Server (MCMS). With a population of 130,328, Tendring District Council services the civic needs for the north eastern corner of Essex. The Council's commitment to delivering a high quality customer service means residents can expect comprehensive, accurate and timely information. To meet these expectations the Council use AchieveForms, an intelligent on-line form package that reduces the cost of paper systems. The system tightly integrates with SharePoint, which is used for the Council's intranet and MCMS, which is used to manage web page content.
Business Need
E-Local Government targets, set by the ODPM, meant that Tendring District Council had to concentrate on changing multiple paper-based processes into cost effective on-line processes for the public.
As well as Local Government targets, several other objectives needed to be achieved by the software. Importantly, the solutions had to be capable of integrating with SharePoint and MCMS.
With their newly revamped website, the council also needed to implement an online form package to deal with anything from a garage rental application to beach hut licence renewing.
Solution
When faced with the challenge of increasing productivity and enhancing value for money, IT is an area where too much time can be spent on needlessly complex, low-value tasks. The Council had to find userfriendly, cost effective packages that would work as one with their existing systems.
"Tendring District Council is committed to improving customer access to its services. Last year we redesigned our website to provide a more customer focussed 24/7 service. This included the introduction of AchieveForms, allowing our customers to contact us, apply for services or report problems online. AchieveForms integrated with our content management system and we are continuing to see an increase in the number of online forms accessed on our website."
-- Lisa Leggett, Web Editor, Tendring District Council
AchieveForms is the most feature rich, easy to use on-line form package available. Because it's interoperable architecture allows it to work well within a SharePoint environment, the Council saw it as an ideal solution.
The Results
The direct result from Tendring's adoption of the Achieve product and it's tight integration into SharePoint and MCMS is a faster, more cost effective process.
In addition to the above, AchieveForms is server-based meaning its licensing structure allows it to be more cost effective for deployment to their 4000 office based employees.
With their systems working as one, the Council can take advantage of:
- Reduction of information duplication
- Accurate data thanks to systems validation capabilities
- Instant reporting facilities
- Revenue streams improved.
These features give customers a better service, staff can focus on core business tasks, costs are reduced and additional revenue is generated.
