Lagan makes more deals

The overall upgrading of the United Kingdom’s CRM continues this week, and Lagan is all over the map of the Isles. With early Monday morning came the announcement that three local authorities in Northamptonshire had signed an £800,000 (approximately $1.58 million) joint deal with Lagan for the company’s Customer Relationship Management system.

In what is being touted as “a forward-looking initiative designed to make access to local authority services easier and quicker for citizens across the region,” Northampton Borough Council, Daventry District Council and Corby Borough Council worked in tandem to procure the system.

Under terms of the agreement, the initial implementation of the Lagan solution will focus on achieving specific service improvements and efficiency gains and into inter-authority shared-service delivery initiatives. These initiatives may result in future partnerships into other public services such as the county council, the Primary Care Trust, and law enforcement.

The cooperation was initiated by all parties and supported by the IDeA, an organisation working in partnership with all councils on CRM improvement. James Fox, Corby’s corporate enterprise team manager, stated that the first bits of Lagan CRM went live in July and is part of a three-year programme with a greater future ever in mind: “With the population of Corby set to double to more than 100,000 by 2030, a wider ‘Catalyst Corby’ regeneration scheme will include new leisure, retail and commercial facilities across the town as well as a modern transport infrastructure.”

Meanwhile, Surrey Heath District Council has released some performance results shown by its own ongoing implementation of a Lagan CRM system in “reconcil[ing] the two-fold challenge of improving service delivery whilst reducing costs.”

Read an announcement from the council: “Incremental efficiency gains and cost reductions have been identified to support the CRM implementation that has already delivered a quantifiable improvement in service delivery to customers. Furthermore, the technology has created a platform for ongoing cost savings, critically by supporting the Council’s move towards shared service delivery with neighbouring authorities.”

Surrey Heath Council first “embarked upon a concerted drive to transform service delivery and provide customers with a single point of contact for all council services,” i.e. look into that wacky CRM stuff, back in 2004. “CRM was identified as the tool to create a consolidated service centre,” said Surrey Heath district council head of CRM Richard Payne.

Surrey Heath chose Lagan’s CRM solution and began an “aggressive” five-stage implementation programme in February 2005. The plan – reportedly still on schedule – calls for all services to be run within the CRM infrastructure by February 2007.

The Council prioritized the deployment of environmental services – an area which creates significant volumes of customer interaction for services including pest control and waste management. Lagan’s CRM solution has been integrated with the MVM software used by environmental services and the contact centre reportedly now resolves 80 percent of customer enquiries at first contact, the council’s original goal for the service.

Reportedly, Lagan CRM has also enabled an overhaul of back end processes to introduce service improvements such as automated faxes to certain third-party contractors. Surrey Heath has also integrated the ACOLNET Building Services application. And thanks to apparent customer satisfaction in Surrey Heath, the council is now working with local partners including neighbouring Hart district council, the police, NHS, Surrey county council and local disability groups to assess opportunities for closer collaboration – presumably meaning more pounds for Lagan.

The Borough of Surrey Heath covers 36.5 square miles and its main town is quaint Camberley; located in northwest Surrey, Surrey Heath has a population of over 80,000.

Lagan was established in 1994 as a spin-off from Queen’s University Belfast, with backing from QUBIS Ltd. Lagan specializes in CRM solutions, principally for government. The firm has recently received kudos with its appearance in the Deloitte Fast 50 for four successive years and a listing in the Sunday Times ARM Tech Track 100 as one of the UK’s fastest growing technology companies.