Northamptonshire County Council’s (NCC) new service management software has improved public services in the region by providing self-service capabilities and helping deal with enquiries more efficiently.

The local authority introduced an integrated business support service desk (BSSD) from supplier Touchpaper last November to link its existing IT service desk, systems, processes and human resources (HR) and finance departments into one consolidated service desk manned by 15 staff.

The integrated infrastructure and creation of a common set of processes allows service desk staff to respond quicker to council employees, citizens and suppliers. Business processes from other parts of the organisation may be incorporated into the service desk to further improve efficiency.

The BSSD is also supporting a joined-up services approach as NCC is now providing IT services to the Borough Council of Wellingborough, with a self-service portal allowing staff to report faults and log, track and monitor calls.

The finance department also uses the BSSD to log all accounts payable queries which can be accessed by service desk staff, who can link to the financial payment system to find information, such as payment due dates for invoices, to answer caller enquiries.

More complex queries are filtered through to the finance department enabling them to focus on core activities.

The HR department has used the BSSD since March to answer all HR service queries and track and monitor progress.

‘We had an aggressive timescale of only six months in which to implement the new BSSD,’ said Janet Evans, transformation manager for NCC.

‘The system will provide us with a more efficient framework in which to adopt smarter ways of working within NCC and deliver significant improvements in customer satisfaction.’