Impact

The impact on the management of the business has been considerable. SE Management now monitors its activities on a monthly basis and makes use of simple data to track performance and investigate problem areas. There is clear visibility of progression against local improvement plans and an increased performance measurement framework. Action planning is now very specific, as a result of the fact we have identified benefits by contribution to the overall Business Case, based on local LEC and Business Gateway job role and location.

There are a number of direct impacts, both internal to the organisation and within the marketplace. The following statistics are relevant:

- 85% of all staff are using the system on a regular basis
- 100% of staff in customer facing roles use the system as the basis for their activities
- 200,000+ company records have been added
- 225,000+ contacts have been made and recorded
- 650 intervention frameworks have been recorded on the system. This represents all of SE's products and
services, across all customer segments

One of other major impacts achieved was a secondary process resulting from use of elements of the core functionality in the CRM system. Contained within the system is a product catalogue which houses SE's intervention frameworks (types of products and services) available to our segmented business base. As part of the CRM deployment we coded all products and services contained within the catalogue with a cross referenced code to the finance system to enable tracking of expenditure against product. This now allows us to evaluate cost of delivery per product and service against our segmented client base, by LEC and Business Gateway area to ensure consistency and value for money.

The methodology and supporting model encourages comparison and competition and engenders a culture where performance measurement is used both as a management measure and to inform planning and personal development.

The benefits model outlined will track business productivity benefits month on month for 60 months, business unit by business unit, role by role. Performance measures, (currently improved activity levels) will translate into increased outputs, eg greater penetration rates of SE products and services with resulting impacts on the Scottish economy.

Both the gathering of this data and the systematic and pragmatic way in which it has been gathered, mean that this is probably the most transparent and straightforward to evaluate programme that SE has ever been involved in. The data gathering approach, supporting performance evidence and performance improvement model has been reviewed internally by the Internal Audit Team and SE's Audit Committee where it has been held up as one of the most robust pieces of evaluation work carried out in SE.

Lessons learnt

There have already been some international comparisons made with SE and its operations. Recent international benchmarking of our economic development approach has included New Zealand, Estonia, Vietnam, China and Romania. These countries have been interested both in the streamlining of business support activities and the use of ICT to enhance this.

Other areas of relevance include the linking of national policy and strategy, via Smart Successful Scotland, through to local planning and decision making.

The partnership working within this case is particularly strong. There are lessons for both large and wealthy administrations and for those with significantly less size and resource. For the larger administrations, there are lessons in collaboration in terms of enabling and encouraging people to work together rather than in their own silos or, worse, actively against each other. For the developing administrations, there is a means to show how to increase productivity and effectiveness from a small and diminishing resource base.

Our approach has enabled us to measure performance across a broad geographical spread, covering multiple job roles. The simple, understandable measures mean that management both understand and use the data provided, which has been something of a breakthrough.

An additional matter of interest and relevance of this case to other administrations is that we have shown that simplicity is best, and that well documented measurements owned by the business are likely to help make a difference. We have been able to crystallise an apparently diverse part of the organisation into a small number of simple measures, behind which are a number of key elements. This enables senior management to identify problems quickly and, by investigation, find the causes. This means that action on poor performance can be taken more quickly, with obvious impacts on service provision.

In considering the learning points, we have reflected on the entire CRM implementation process including the Performance Management and Improvement model from start to finish. Many things have become clear to us, but one of the primary ones has been the importance of 'more haste, less speed' when implementing the process. Specifically, this relates to user involvement. It can sometimes take what seems to be an age to encourage users to buy into the system, but we have found this to be time well spent in the long term.

We have found that the simplest ratios are the best for management. Simplicity of data encourages its use. The analytical power of ICT can, (but often does not), enhance data through simplification. Complex data is only read by those with an analytical mind, whereas those in leadership positions are often, by necessity, strategic thinkers who want to see how measures fit simply into the big picture.