The solution
By a direct award through the Crown Commercial Service framework, Basildon and Brentwood council adopted CFH as their annual billing communications partner and agreed to a phased implementation. The annual billing was to be run through a managed service solution, where a dedicated account manager is on hand to ensure its successful completion and to answer any questions.
However, the council needed further help. In addition to their bulk printing requirements, the council also needed a solution that was able to manage their daily billing and everyday resident communications, whilst providing the Council with reporting functionality and a digital dashboard to manage mailing output. CFH’s Docbox software solution was able to offer this and completely meet their needs.
Docbox is a secure print software solution that sits within the infrastructure of an organisation, allowing multiple users to print and send postal communications via CFH Docmail’s remote production facility whilst being able to monitor and manage these all centrally, improving cost management.
Working with CFH, Basildon and Brentwood implemented the Docbox software into their existing council infrastructure. The whole process was project managed by CFH, with a dedicated project manager overseeing the initial set-up, which took just over 8 weeks.
Docbox provides all of the standard print and post choices you would expect including postage class, envelope type and output, allowing the user to easily send communication as and when required whether from their desktop or from the Docbox dashboard.
The process
The long-term relationship with the council allowed CFH to easily understand the council’s requirements, resulting in 30 definitions being created within Docbox, so that all print requirements were met.
Minimal changes were required to the existing templates allowing the council to start sending communications immediately.
Understanding the councils’ workflows and schedules allowed the Docbox system to be configured to meet demand and it was agreed that Docbox would deliver the print files to the CFH production facility twice a day, 5 days a week. From there the mailings would be printed and despatched.
The Senior System Control Officer and System Control Officer of Basildon and Brentwood’s revenues and benefits team are two of the users of Docbox within the council, where they send and manage the daily billing output.
The software provides the team and their colleagues with a quick, easy-to-use, secure method of communicating effectively with their residents when it matters most. The software minimises the printing process by streamlining their everyday communications in a secure way, saving the council valuable time and money.
Over the past year, the council have sent over 300,000 mailings through the Docbox solution and continues to increase their output to meet their resident’s requirements.
Docbox features a secure, personalised dashboard that provides the leadership team as well as other members of their team, the ability to monitor their communication output. Within the dashboard group administrators are able to recall and monitor any communications that require amending or cancelling any letters before they are processed, providing a means of double-checking the output they need to send.
This proofing feature within the dashboard has helped improve the accuracy of their output whilst ensuring that mailings are delivered within the time scale required.
The team also have the ability to run daily, monthly and yearly reports in the dashboard to monitor spend and output across the different departments as well as on an individual basis.
