Realising Cost Savings Whilst Maintaining Service Quality
“The response to pressure on available resources should be to seek greater value
for money rather than to simply reduce the effectiveness of public services.” –
Definition of National Indicator 179 (NI 179)
Responding to NI 179 requires an understanding of two sets of data and their
interaction.
The first set of data is the cost of providing each service though each channel.
Gathering this information will not only allow the aggregated response expected
of the NI 179 indicator but will also allow insight into the relative costs of
using different channels to deliver the services. In this way the expectation of
continuing cost savings can be supported through planning of cost saving
measures and the analysis of results achieved.
The second set of data is a measure of service quality as the NI 179 as the
guidance, while expecting councils to provide information on savings, also
expects these to be made “…without any deterioration of the overall
effectiveness of that service”. This places a requirement on the council to have
a mechanism for measuring and reporting on the effectiveness of services. This
is very likely to be strongly reflected in customer satisfaction.
Measuring Service Effectiveness By Obtaining The Customer’s View
GovMetric is an established service for gathering customer satisfaction across
all contact channels and for all services. GovMetric uses a simple question set
to gain customer satisfaction feedback and a web-based reporting suite to allow
council officers to develop insight into the customer satisfaction data
gathered. By using GovMetric the council can gather satisfaction data and thus
track and react to any service satisfaction issues caused by cost savings.
Integrated Delivery Of NI 179
By integrating satisfaction data gathered by GovMetric and cost data by service
and by channel GovMetric:VFM can provide an integrated approach to delivering
against NI179 councils in rapidly and sustainably tackling the apparently
conflicting objectives of reducing cost and delivering maintained (or improved)
services.
As part of the integrated NI 179 solution, GovMetric provides reporting on both
costs/cost savings and satisfaction both at an overall level and by service or
channel. GovMetric will also allow plans to be established for cost savings and
service satisfaction improvements so that the council can compare achievement
against plan for both of these measures.
