South Staffordshire Council has gone live with electronic working less than three months after starting the project to turn its local taxation department into a paperless working environment. Thanks to electronic document management (EDM) and workflow from public sector IT specialist Comino, South Staffordshire Council is successfully moving away from paper-based systems and making massive efficiency savings in both time and money.
Local taxation, which handles council tax and business rates, was the second most paper-rich department after benefits. South Staffordshire’s figures show the department deals with approximately 25,000 items a year. Implementing the Comino system will not only remove the daily paper chase, but will also enable South Staffordshire’s customer service staff to answer more enquiries at the first point of contact.
Commenting on the business case for electronic working, Rob Wolfe, head of local taxation services at South Staffordshire Council, states, “The Comino system is able to recognise scanned documents and route them to all relevant departments as soon as they come in. It pays for itself with these time savings and will make us the responsive and efficient service that both we and our customers want.”
The implementation of Comino’s EDM and workflow solution into local taxation was the first part of a corporate rollout.
The Council will now look towards moving more of its operations onto Comino.
ENDS
About South Staffordshire Council
Located to the North of the West Midlands conurbation, South Staffordshire Council serves a population of some 106,000 across 27 rural parishes.
The local taxation section handles 43,000 domestic and 2,300 non-domestic properties and collects some £59 million in Council Tax and Business Rates each year.