As part of a major transformation programme, Medway Council initiated a project to handle all calls in its customer contact centre. To support this, it selected awi, NDL’s integration technology, to link between the front-office CRM and a number of back-office systems. Through one integration alone, it saved £85,000 in capital costs as well as driving significant efficiencies. It has now extended its programme of integration, and it is also starting to implement mobile working using NDL’s mobile technology, enabling officers to spend more time in the field.

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South Norfolk Council embarked on a ‘lean’ service review, which highlighted three areas for improvement: to integrate disparate systems, to implement more self-service and to bring more services into a central contact centre. To do this, the Council is using awi, NDL’s integration technology, to underpin a wide range of integration projects. It is rolling the solution out widely, supporting both improved service delivery and one-off data integrity projects. As a result it has considerably exceeded its target for time saved and will more than recoup its investment in less than 12 months.

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Argyll and Bute Council launched a major initiative to improve customer service through system integration. It has already successfully completed an integration project for social services, using awi from NDL to link its front-office Lagan CRM with its CareFirst social work system. It has now moved on to environmental health, using awi again to integrate the front office with its back-office Idox Uniform application. As a result, it has saved the equivalent of one FTE, improved customer service and streamlined front-office processes.

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Stevenage Borough Council wanted to improve the way customers could report environmental nuisances, and in particular to eliminate duplicate reports. By using awi from NDL to integrate between Fix My Street, an online reporting facility, and the front-office CRM, customers and staff are now able to view the most up-to-date information on all logged incidents and updates. This has reduced duplication and avoidable contacts, decreased manual re-keying and enhanced customer communications.

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Newcastle City Council identified that social workers’ time was being wasted carrying out repetitive duplicate data entry. It therefore used awi^SX, NDL’s integration server technology, to integrate two back-office systems, which has automated this transfer of data. As a result, it has saved 364 working days which equates to almost £70,000 a year. It is now using the awi suite across a range of integration projects, eliminating wasteful data entry and automating laborious processes.

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As part of a review to identify potential service improvements and financial efficiencies, The Moray Council recently set up a central customer contact centre. The programme then involved different services transferring initial customer contact to this one central point. One of the first services to migrate was its Housing Repairs service and, at the same time, it implemented mobile working for its housing repairs operatives. By using awi^MX and awi^SX, NDL’s mobile and integration technology, it has now integrated both its front-office CRM and three back-office systems to support the new way of working. As a result, it has realised significant efficiencies and cost-savings.

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Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council launched a new Access to Services Strategy, which focused on providing a single point of contact via a contact centre. Using awi, NDL’s integration technology, it has enabled a number of services to be transferred to the contact centre, including applications for free school meals and payment of parking tickets. Its most recent project, in conjunction with Tees Achieve, has allowed the development of an additional method of enrolment for their courses. As a result of using NDL technology for four projects to date, Stockton has saved over £25,000 per year, increased customer satisfaction and improved data integrity.

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Bath & North East Somerset Council carried out regular inspections of its waste collect crews. It wanted to make these inspections more efficient and also wanted to maximise the use of the data collected. By using awi^MX, NDL’s mobile technology, officers now enter their reports remotely during the course of their rounds. In addition, valuable management information is now produced, enabling trend analysis and identification of good and bad practice.

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Corby Borough Council implemented a new CRM system and embarked on a programme of integration. After trying other options, it turned instead to awi, NDL’s flexible and cost-effective universal integration technology. Now it is successfully extending its integration programme on a service-by-service basis across the Council, creating significant efficiencies and improving service delivery.

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As part of an authority-wide strategy to ‘put customers first’, Oxford City Council implemented a new CRM solution in its customer contact centres. Critical to its selection was its inter-operability with NDL’s awi integration technology, which has given Oxford a versatile toolkit for integrating existing back-office systems with the front office. This has now been successfully achieved for its City Homes and Revenues & Benefits departments. Oxford is now rolling out integrated mobile applications, supporting field workers across the Authority.

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Halton Borough Council’s programme to streamline customer service across a choice of access channels was hampered by lack of integration between the front and back office. It is now using NDL’s awi^SX integration server technology to give front-office staff access to back-office applications. The first implementation is being used to assess eligibility for Blue Badges: the time taken to carry this out has been slashed from 30 days to an instant decision.

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Maldon District Council has implemented a wide range of technology to improve customer service. However its disparate applications were operating in isolation, limiting the efficiencies gained. It has now started of programme of integrating the front office with back-office systems, using NDL’s awi integration technology. This is not simply improving customer service. By eliminating re-keying of data, errors in job location details have been cut: this will now be used to re-negotiate more cost-effective service contracts.

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Winchester City Council has successfully implemented mobile working using ndl-metascybe’s awi^MX integrated mobile platform. Building control inspectors and environmental wardens can now update existing central applications remotely, saving considerable time and costs. Winchester will now roll the system out more widely across the authority. It is also planning to implement ndl-metascybe’s complementary application integration platform to enable seamless access across existing back-office systems, supporting its drive to streamline customer contact.

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Bolton Council embarked on an enterprise mobile working programme, starting with Highway Inspections. Using awi^MX, NDL’s mobile solution, inspectors are now creating and closing reports as well as generating work orders in the field. As a result, the Council has achieved annual savings to date of £50,000 plus substantial efficiency improvements. It is now starting to roll out mobile working across other service areas.

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Reigate & Banstead Council’s aim was to significantly cut the time taken to process residents’ environmental services issues by integrating front and back-office systems. Faced with even higher levels of customer calls, and a web-based self-service, it needed a more powerful integration solution to ensure the increased customer traffic was processed quickly. It is now using ndl-metascybe’s proven awi integration technology not only to save staff time on each transaction, but also to reduce development overheads.

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As part of a business transformation programme, Scottish Borders wanted to rationalise its contact centres, bringing all services under one roof in each major town. To do this, it needed to integrate the front office with back-office applications. It is now using NDL’s awi integration technology to enable instant access to the environmental services application, gathering information using simple e-forms and taking payments. Benefits include bringing the recycling helpline in-house, improving services to citizens and saving £30,000 a year on external contracts.

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Wrexham County Borough Council, in North East Wales, serves a mixed industrial and rural area. Based around the town of Wrexham, it has a population of 130,000 and covers approximately 503 square kilometres.

Wrexham had successfully implemented three back-office applications from Northgate, supporting planning, building control and environmental health. Users of all three however needed access to a variety of associated documents, all of which were stored in an electronic document management system from Comino.
Initially Wrexham pursued the possibility of directly integrating the Northgate applications with the Comino system. This functionality was implemented for the planning application but to achieve this for the others would involve an additional investment of £15,000 per application. It therefore looked for another, more-cost effective approach.

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Tunbridge Wells Borough Council wanted to streamline the way environmental protection officers carried out food hygiene inspections. It is now using a combination of digital pens and awi^SX, NDL’s integration technology, to automate the way they make reports. As a result the Borough has saved approximately 1500 hours a year. It is now looking at ways of using the same technology in other departments.

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Stroud District Council, like all local authorities, faces reduced funding while still having to introduce efficiencies.

It initially used awi, NDL’s integration server technology, to transfer microfiche images to its central document management system.

It then realised that awi would be a powerful tool to use elsewhere, and would enable its experienced in-house team to develop cost-effective solutions for integrating disparate systems. Now a number of services across the authority are starting to benefit.

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Rochdale Metropolitan Borough Council teamed with ICT provider Agilisys to transform the delivery of its environmental services.

Rochdale chose Microsoft Windows devices as part of a flexible mobile way of working and awi^MX from NDL to integrate the contact centre with the field staff. awi^MX was selected as it offered a flexible easy to use platform that Rochdale could use to develop applications that automatically integrated with the back office.

This means that Rochdale can provide real-time updates to customers, something they could never do before.

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Daventry District Council is in the process of implementing an integration programme to streamline all the environmental service calls into a “one stop shop” as part of their service transformation programme with the goal of saving both time and money.

The IT team identified environmental services calls as an area of focus that might provide an opportunity to improve efficiency, generate savings and provide a fast return on investment. During their initial investigations they looked at individual APIs but found this was a cost prohibitive way to proceed. However, they were under considerable pressure to save money and reduce the administrative burden as well as meeting important national reporting standards, and had to look for an alternative approach.

awi^SX, from NDL offered the perfect solution as they were able to maintain and extend the investment in the back-office application whilst fronting the service requests in a simple manner using Lagan CRM. Using awi^SX allowed Daventry District Council to maintain the use of the back- office application for the core functionality and national reporting standards that M3 offered without re-creating this functionality in the CRM.

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Dudley MBC’s one-stop-shop is enhancing customer service by using NDL’s awi to integrate CRM with back-office applications. Front-office staff can now take details of faulty street lights and trigger service requests immediately in the back office. They are also putting tenants in contact immediately with the relevant housing manager for their area.

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When The Gateshead Housing Company became part of the Tyne & Wear Homes sub-regional lettings scheme, it needed to find a way to integrate its in-house housing management system with the central Abritas system. To do this, it used awi, NDL’s integration suite, saving the capital cost of an API and ensuring data integrity. Now it has used awi to carry out a number of other integrations, saving time and money and ensuring greater data accuracy.

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Trafford Housing Trust wanted to improve both the service it provided to customers and its working processes for staff. It implemented a customer hub and selected NDL’s awi integration technology to link its new CRM system with its existing back-office housing management system. Customers are now receiving a more streamlined service over the telephone, while staff have access to more consistent information.

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When Weaver Vale Housing Trust decided to explore options for alternative, more efficient ways to deliver its Housing Repair Service, the Trust decided to invest in a remote-working application for tradesmen working in the field. Weaver Vale wanted a cost effective flexible system that had plenty of scope for mobile integration for a variety of projects.

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Scottish Borders Housing Association had automated the scheduling of repairs appointments, but was unable to close off jobs in its central housing application without manual intervention.  Now, as a result of implementing NDL’s awi integration technology, operatives are able to close jobs while out in the field. This has enabled Association staff to be redeployed elsewhere and has improved management reporting. SBHA is now extending use of awi to support the introduction of e-forms for mobile working.

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Providing safe homes and neighbourhoods is a priority for West Kent. It provides repairs, maintenance and inspection services to tenants delivered by a team of 20 mobile technicians. Over half of the technicians also provide gas servicing and inspections, which is a legal requirement for West Kent.

Many of the properties managed by West Kent were built in the 1970s and 1980s, when asbestos was commonly used in construction. West Kent has surveyed a cross section of these properties and has compiled a register of the ones where asbestos is present. Asbestos doesn’t pose a risk to health if it is undamaged or left undisturbed, and was commonly used as insulation for pipes and boilers and for fire protection and insulation in lofts, attics and crawl spaces, all the places where field technicians could come into contact with it.

West Kent is legally required to notify all the field technicians of the presence of asbestos in a property. When a tenant calls the West Kent call centre during office hours to request a repair, a job ticket is given to a technician along with the asbestos register for the property. This enables the technicians to make safe working arrangements. But when a call comes in out-of-hours, West Kent had no practical way of providing the asbestos register to the on-call technicians. “We considered giving them a printed out copy of the entire asbestos register, but the document would have been a foot thick,” explains Peter Brightwell, systems analyst at West Kent Housing Association.

Using NDL’s awi^MX platform, West Kent was able to quickly and easily develop an application without the need to use or understand a Java development system as awi^MX did it all for them. Technicians can now check for asbestos and other alerts on properties they visit outside of normal office hours, directly from their BlackBerry® handset.

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Housing association Coast & Country has slashed processing time for purchase orders and payment of supplier invoices by implementing awi from ndl-metascybe.

The entire process has now been fully automated, releasing resources for other tasks and cutting paper storage costs.

It is now extending the solution to support its move to choice-based lettings.

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New housing association Thrive Homes is committed to improving not only its housing stock but also the quality of the services it delivers.

To achieve this, it has embarked on a programme to integrate existing back office applications. awi, NDL’s integration technology, is playing a major role in enabling Thrive to achieve its aims.

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East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust needed to eliminate wasteful duplicated data entry as well as ensuring its central Patient Administration System (PAS) was more accurate and up-to-date. To do this, it needed to integrate a number of systems with the PAS. It has used awi, NDL’s integration technology, to carry this out and, as a result, it has been able to divert staff time to more productive tasks, patients are tracked more stringently and data is entered more accurately and in real time.

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Norfolk Community Health and Care NHS Trust wanted to produce Minimum Data Sets in a more timely and cost-effective manner. By using awi^DX from NDL to extract the data from SystmOne, it has been able to move from monthly to weekly reporting, and to reduce the administrative burden on its team of analysts. It is now using awi^DX to extract data for a number of other reports, and is planning to use it to support the generation of CIDS.

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Informatics Merseyside is an NHS IM&T shared service, working with healthcare trusts across the Merseyside area to support and improve the quality of care delivered to patients. In particular, its aims align with the Quality, Innovation, Productivity and Prevention (QIPP) agenda of improving the quality of care within the NHS while also achieving significant cost savings.

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Northern Devon Healthcare NHS Trust had a long-term vision of providing care closer to patients’ homes. It was also facing a number of new challenges, including the introduction of the national Community Information Data Set (CIDS). It took this opportunity to introduce mobile working for its nurses and therapists working in the community, using awi^MX, NDL’s mobile technology running on Android tablet devices. By enabling the entry of data directly into its central patient information system, the Trust estimates it will make annual productivity improvements of £1 million.

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Blackpool Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust Community Health Services needed to reduce the amount of time wasted by clinicians through re-keying data into different systems. It identified awi from NDL as the best way of integrating disparate systems across the Trust. Once it started working with awi, it discovered a plethora of different ways to save time and money while still maintaining service standards.



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NHS Rotherham uses the TPP SystmOne application to manage and coordinate patient care records for its community based services. Reports are produced on a regular basis to enable the Trust’s performance to be analysed for the benefit of the patients and to enable the Trust to monitor performance and compliance in accordance with national standards.

Administrators of the TPP SystmOne application are therefore tasked with the production of minimum data sets (MDS) extracts, on a regular basis. The SystmOne MDS extraction procedure currently implemented at Rotherham has no in-built automation or scheduling capabilities, so the procedure is very laborious and could be susceptible to error. When this is taken in the context of NHS Rotherham having over 40 individual SystmOne units, considerable repetitive effort is needed to complete this key task.

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Accurate mapping information is critical when digging holes to maintain utility supplies.

Balfour Beatty Utility Solutions has selected awi^SX from NDL to automate the collection and provision of safe-dig map packs for its teams in the field, drawing on information from a variety of mapping applications. This has slashed the time it takes to produce the packs, cut production costs and significantly improved the accuracy of this vital information.

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