CRM in Scotland, Part I

The conquest of the United Kingdom by CRM, one council at a time, continues. The latest to line up to help put Britain in the 21st century is the Aberdeenshire Council, which plans to integrate customer relationship management software with the council’s telephony systems and to link to functions such as revenues and benefits, housing, planning, building control and its local property tracking gazetteer.

In theory, the system will track individual requests and enquiries by citizens to make sure they are dealt with, give council bosses more extensive performance management information with which to monitor customer satisfaction.

The Aberdeenshire contract was given to Northgate Information Systems, who was in the industry news just last week for extending its reach into Wales, with the Caerphilly council announcing their award of a £500,000 (approximately US $947,000) three-year contract to the company.

Under terms of the agreement, the Northgate Front Office CRM system, intelligent call routing, and knowledge management applications will be implemented in Caerphilly. Phase one of that project has an announced completion date of March 2007 and will include services in environmental health, highways, public services and central recruitment.

Northgate CRM software is currently used in UK customer service for over 8 million citizens. Founded in 1969, Northgate Information Solutions employs 3,300, and other concomitant statistics are more impressive. In the UK, Northgate works with four out of five local authorities and every police force. Its systems are used in the management of over 1.5 million local authority and housing association properties; in the administration of more than £17 billion (approximately US $32.2 billion) in revenues and benefits; and in electoral administration systems covering over 18 million people.