The annual billing period is one the busiest periods at CFH, where staff across the business work hard to ensure our council client requirements are processed and delivered on time to meet their deadlines… and this year was no different.
The teams across all three sites, once again offered fantastic dedication and professionalism to ensure SLAs were met, making the 2024 annual billing project another successful period for the company.
This year we worked with a total of 41 councils in England - 3 of which were new customers and 38 who were pre-existing customers and a total of 11 councils in Scotland, in partnership with Royal Mail through the Print and Post framework.
In total we worked with 52 councils to deliver annual billing statements across the UK.
The preparation for the 2024 annual billing period started at the end of 2023, when the account managers across our three sites began their kick-off meetings with our BDM teams and clients, to discuss requirements and workstreams. These meetings are important in ascertaining the specific requirements for each of our council clients and for us to build upon our experience and expertise in what we can offer.
Different workstreams for production are created for the different types of documents that are sent out. This includes Council Tax, housing benefits, exemption notices, landlord letters and National Non-domestic Rates (NNDR). In many circumstances our clients utilise our match and merge functionality where multiple letters for example bills and benefits are consolidated into one envelope for a single recipient, to save on postage. In addition, many of our clients include additional inserts into their letters including leaflets and booklets to provide further information to their residents.
The annual billing period touches nearly every part of the business, with teams across our three sites being involved in its successful delivery. Whether that’s working behind the scenes, managing and engaging with our clients or working first-hand on the documents that are sent, the process only works due to the effort of everyone involved. Each team provided exemplary service, meaning that every letter went out without fault and landed on time, with all customer schedules being met.
Our managed services teams were able to leverage their experience throughout this process, to boast a seamless execution and support on behalf of their clients, with many of the team now having taken part in this project for many years now. The team had 2 new members, both of whom benefited from mentoring and shared expertise to help them take the new experience in their stride without any problems.
As part of our continual improvement procedures, we take the time to review our processes so that we can optimise and build upon what we can offer clients. Whether this is something that will directly benefit our customers or improve our internal processes to offer a more seamless way of working.
This year we had a new annual billing portal, that was built by our internal IT teams to help streamline the annual billing processes for the teams involved. The online portal was used to record all council information, volumes, stationery requirements, stock codes, data counts and despatch dates acting as a complete database of our client requirements.
The system was a fantastic addition to help manage the annual billing projects this year, helping simplify the process for everyone involved.
This year we produced, managed and dispatched a total of 3,389,706 annual billing documents including 766,500 documents in Scotland and 2,623,206 in England. This is a real testament to our robust solutions and processes as well as our staff, in managing this quantity of documents through our factory in such a short space of time.
This year we had 3 councils utilise our Dotpost solution to send secure communications electronically. In total, we sent 81,125 annual billing documents through our Dotpost solution.
In addition, we had 2 customers who utilised our secure e-link offering to engage with their residents during this time, sending a total of 1,524 annual billing through this solution.
Whilst most of our clients opted for standard DSA delivery, 14 of our clients opted to utilise the new DSA economy delivery offering which meant documents would be delivered within 5 days of their dispatch.
Further to this, 13 of our clients who opted for DSA economy delivery were identified as eligible to take part in the TIS Scheme, which forms a part of the Royal Mail Test and Innovation Incentive. The TIS Scheme meant that government bodies could save up to 5% on postage prices between January – May 2024 when utilising the DSA economy delivery option for the first time.
For this to happen our sales team were proactive in identifying clients whose delivery schedules and SLA requirements met the criteria of the scheme, applications were filled out on their behalf and discounted postage prices applied to their agreements.
The final saving figure for these councils is yet to be announced, but we are positive that each council who took part experienced a significant saving on their postal price. We will be pleased to share the savings and outcomes of the scheme shortly.
We’ve received some lovely feedback from our customers on the support provided during this year’s annual billing period and the successful project that we have delivered. I am pleased to share some comments below:
Mid Sussex Revenues and Benefits Team: “I would just like to say a huge thank you for everything to make our first annual billing as smooth and stress-free as is possible!”
Tendring Council Revenues and Benefits Team: “Can I take the time to thank you and all those involved at CFH for another year of annual billing for Tendring.”
Moray Council Revenues and Benefits Team: “I’m really pleased that we have everything out on schedule. Thanks for pulling this all together for us.”
Stirling Council Revenues and Benefits Team: “Amazing thank you again for everything.”
The success of this year couldn’t have happened without the teams’ of CFH’s hard work.
We would like to extend a thank you to the teams involved in making this year another successful annual billing, helping our clients send their statements on time and ensuring our processes were robust and efficient for effective delivery.
We would like to special thank you to Production, IT, Account Management, Postage, Tenders, The Business Development Managers, Projects, Legal, Quality Control and Logistics for helping us effortlessly deliver our annual billing client projects this year.
It’s fair to say that this was the best year yet for annual billing, with it improving year on year with the careful planning and analysis of the results we deliver.
We look forward to delivering another successful annual billing in 2025.
