Lagan wins Blackpool Council contract

Lagan’s Case Management technology will enable Blackpool Council to deliver Adult Services more effectively.

Blackpool Council has recently signed a new contract with Lagan, a provider of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Enterprise Case Management solutions to Government, to replace their existing Adult Services application with Lagan software. The Lagan solution will dramatically increase the efficiency and quality of delivering services to vulnerable adults within Blackpool. The project will also bring about internal improvements, efficiencies and cost savings; Blackpool Council predicts annual savings of £500,000 through these process efficiency improvements.
The contract is part of the Council’s full commitment to the Government’s Transformational Agenda and its own Customer First strategy which is about gearing services around the citizen not the authority.

In 1998 Blackpool Council became a unitary authority when it took over education and social services from Lancashire County Council following local government reorganisation. Looking to improve its services, Blackpool Adult Social Services used an approach known as ‘vanguard’, by which it forensically analysed its services and the way in which they were provided. The Council completely redesigned its working processes and took the opportunity to do something entirely new. Blackpool selected Lagan’s Case Management solution because of its openness and flexibility as well as its ability to underpin the radical redesign of Adult Social Services. The solution was chosen over the current social services software suppliers because it steers away from the ‘same old ways’ of working and because Lagan is unencumbered by building point-to-point social services applications.

The Lagan system provides a comprehensive, end to end solution for referral, assessment, review, and service commissioning which will improve the quality of service delivered to the adult citizens of Blackpool. This includes providing social workers with a holistic view of all data and a consistent and accurate view of an individual. This is crucial for elderly people, given their uncertain health and the consequences a delay in the provision of services could have for them. The Lagan solution has inherent workflow and task reminders to ensure critical steps in the delivery of service are completed, and third party service providers are managed. A comprehensive process audit trail and powerful data security provides a secure environment for sensitive citizen data.

Commenting on the reasons why Blackpool Council chose to adopt the Lagan solution Phil Baron, Assistant Director ICT at Blackpool Council says, “There is a strong partnership between Blackpool Council and Lagan, one which began when Blackpool implemented a Lagan CRM solution for our Customer First initiative three years ago. We have built upon this relationship and have extended our use of Lagan software to deliver our Adult Services needs. Lagan’s solution has proven itself to be a very flexible and highly configurable product which delivers real benefits to Blackpool. Moreover, the incumbent Adult Services application it replaces required expensive code changes to amend business processes. The Lagan solution, however, enables Blackpool to amend processes in-house to match changing business needs which gives us greater flexibility and saves us money.“

Baron continues, “Lagan has enabled us to put in place a quality system based on service line and service process that is aligned to how people need to do their jobs as opposed to buying a system that is focused primarily on legislation and the desire of some councils to focus entirely on meeting KPI targets. This system is based on dealing with the citizen and enabling it to be easy to use by those who need to use it.”