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Hogn O'Brien

Local government: Vangent forges key partnership at Southwark Council

Vangent’s key account in the UK public sector is its £100m+ customer management services contract at the London Borough of Southwark, which is now three years into a ten-year relationship. Vangent’s approach is to transform the front-office customer contacts for Southwark (this includes a 220-person contact centre and three one-stop shops) across revenues and benefits services, housing, council tax, education, social services, environmental services and street scene.

Vangent is clearly investing a lot of time and energy into this contract, and this is now paying dividends for the authority. To date, Rourke says that the contract has already saved Southwark £5 million of ‘cashable savings’ through related front-office and departmental efficiencies. He says for every pound saved in the front office, the council is making additional substantial departmental savings.

Southwark benefits by a gain-sharing relationship with Vangent, so that departmental cost savings can be freed up to fund new additional services. This ultimately means the more efficiencies delivered, the greater the benefit for both parties.

This incentive is spurring the Customer Services Centre (CSC) to deliver on shared services opportunities. So far Vangent has added an out-of-hours customer services contract with the Peabody Trust, additional data management work with Southwark’s Primary Care Trust, and the 101-type non-emergency calls on behalf of the Council. Rourke also hopes that that CSC could provide services across London, such as out-of-hours citizen service. Southwark and Vangent have also been selected as a pilot site for the Department for Work and Pensions’ Tell Us Once programme – to design and demonstrate the benefits of data-sharing to deliver multiple services via a single customer contact.

In all, the relationship between Vangent and Southwark appears to be going from strength to strength – indeed in 2005 the authority was recognised as the most improved in the UK, moving from a one-star to a three-star authority in one year. The challenge for Vangent however has been to replicate this success elsewhere in a slow UK local government market. But now, with new backing from a VC that appears to understand government contracting, the possibility of future financial investment makes this a more realistic possibility.