Eureka! Case Study on West Berkshire Council
West Berkshire Council have chosen the Eureka! Time Recording system to help track time and provide better management information for the whole authority as part of a corporate project called 'Developing a service delivery framework'. The system, originally implemented in the Accountancy Section of Financial Services in October 1998, was extended last year to include all support services (Personnel, Training and Admin, Corporate Policy, IT, Contract Support, Legal and Democratic Services). Property and the Education services have also opted to use Eureka before the other direct services, the latter to help monitor Fair Funding for Schools. What stands out about the West Berkshire approach is that they have been extremely successful in encouraging staff to record time.
Staff responsible for the Eureka! Time Recording project at West Berkshire Council. Left: Lesley Blackwell, Corporate Systems Coordinator within Personnel; Centre: Jane Livesey, Head of Personnel, Training & Admin Services and project leader for service delivery framework; Right: Lynn Elliott, Seconded Best Value Accountant within Corporate Policy, who acts in an advisory capacity.
Firstly it was recognised as a corporate initiative, which required the appointment of a project leader. Jane Livesey, Head of Personnel, Training and Admin, leads the project and it is her role to provide regular updates through the steering group to Corporate Board and ultimately Members, this ensures that the important profile of the project is maintained.
Secondly, they ensured that the Service Units were consulted about coding, activities, even the frequency of timesheets (weekly or daily) and their preferred methods of time recording. This role was undertaken by Lynn Elliott, Seconded Best Value Accountant within Corporate Policy, who was initially responsible for setting up Eureka!, and now acts in an advisory capacity. Lynn encouraged Services to devise their own codes for service specific activities, which were later used alongside corporate codes.
Thirdly, they introduced staff to Eureka! gradually, by providing training and bespoke user packs of information, which explained why time recording was necessary and what was expected of them.
Finally, they appointed a Corporate Systems Coordinator to raise the system's profile. This position is held by Lesley Blackwell, who was seconded to Personnel, and who endeavours to ensure that "the fear is taken out of time recording" by providing education and training, sometimes on an individual basis, where staff are particularly unsure of recording time.
Most staff at West Berkshire enter their own timesheets into Eureka!, although others complete paper timesheets, that are passed on for central input. Whenever Lesley has been approached by staff who are unsure or reluctant to enter their time, she has taken the initiative and worked with them to help with the backlog to demonstrate how simple the process is. This has given them the confidence to progress on their own. Lesley is also responsible for ensuring that all timesheets are kept up to date, which she does by contacting the approved System Administrators, one in each service area, on a regular basis.
The success of West Berkshire's Eureka! implementation so far has been due to managing the project in a high profile way, liaising with Service Units to establish their needs, ensuring the coding is kept simple, and overcoming user uncertainties about time recording. The output will be used not only for Best Value purposes but also to assist in service specification, service plans and workload management. Their next step is to undertake a review of the effectiveness of their coding structures to establish whether the level of detail needs to be enhanced or reduced upon. As Best Value progresses, they anticipate that time recording will be relied upon more and more, and that the output from Eureka! will be crucial in Best Value Reviews and keeping that all important balance between work priorities and achievable outputs, so important in the modern work culture of achieving more with less.
How can Eureka! assist with Best Value? Case Study on The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea The Valuers
With Best Value now well under way in Local Authorities, the aim of this case study is to show how one Department, The Valuers at The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, have used the Eureka! Time Costing & Charging System as an effective management tool to help them meet the challenge.
Steve Howe, Deputy Borough Valuer & Business Manager, is responsible for Eureka!, and is assisted by Sue Seal, who controls the day to day running of the system; all professional and support staff in the Department record time. The Valuers are now into the second year of their five-year Best Value
Steve Howe, Deputy Valuer and Business Manager and Sue Seal, PA to Borough Valuer and Deputy, from The Valuers Department at The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, who control the operation of the Eureka! system.
Review programme, which includes the principal review relating to Property Management. Steve identifies two key areas where Eureka! has been a great asset: firstly with Unit Cost provision, and secondly with Performance Indicators. To establish accurate information on Unit Costs, Steve explains that their database was structured on a Case by Case basis (holding Case Reference, Description, Officer Responsible for the Case, Case Type, Start Date, Target Completion Date and Notional Fee). As time is recorded against Cases, costs are calculated and subsequent reports from Eureka! identify Unit Costs at Case, Staff and Work level. Steve comments "We know that we are on top of our trading position - that's important, and Eureka! helps us do that".
As for Performance Indicators, internal ones were devised, such as Cases either over their target completion date and/or over their fee. Monthly P.I. measuring reports are produced via the export of data from Eureka! to Microsoft Access. Another internal P.I. for the department is target chargeable hours, which are incorporated into staff objectives. Again, monthly P.I. reports are produced and issued to individual employees so that they are aware of their achievement on a regular basis and can assess how they are performing in relation to targets. These reports also prove beneficial to managers as they are able to highlight potential problems in good time.
In addition to helping with Unit Costs and Performance Indicators, Steve explains that Eureka! has effective Case and Work monitoring capabilities, which helps with one of the four Cs in Best Value: Consultation with Clients. For one Client in particular, Case details are taken to Client Liaison Meetings so that information is readily to hand on the status of their Cases: Have they been completed? If so, have they been completed on time? What type of work has been processed on them? What is the latest situation on a Case if it is still ongoing? (A 'Notes' facility enables the current position on any Case to be determined at the touch of a function key.) Client feedback has been positive and customers have also commended the base charge information, which is gathered from Eureka! and incorporated into the quarterly service level statements. Furthermore, Eureka! provides a mechanism for comparing internal costs with those of outside consultants because it has the ability to hold a notional fee against each Case. A range of Fee Reports enables fees to be monitored as Cases progress.
Sue described how Eureka! is also helping The Valuers achieve the Investors In People Standard by providing evidence for a number of the 12 Indicators of Good Practice; for example, being able to record the number of hours spent on training, appraising the data and ensuring that no-one gets missed out; (The Valuers would like everyone to complete between 36-40 hours training per year) and the contribution of an individual is recognized through the monthly Case monitoring meetings supported by information on individual Cases contained in the reports from Eureka!
However, for The Valuers, an important factor is not only what the Eureka! database holds, it's how the information can be output and interrogated. For instance, some reports are produced directly to screen or printer, whereas others (such as Income Monitoring for the Department as a whole, and Chargeable Hours and Costs for each member of staff) are exported directly to spreadsheet, so that charts can be generated and graphical analyses performed. Steve and Sue say that they are particularly impressed with the rapid response times from Eureka!, and find it a bonus being able to use interrogation programs, such as Access, with the system.
To summarise, The Valuers at The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea have been using Eureka! for a number of years and have found it an effective tool for establishing Unit Costs, and monitoring performance not only at internal levels (on an individual, departmental and client basis), but also in relation to outside bodies. As Best Value evolves, Steve Howe envisages the possibility of producing more Client orientated reports from Eureka! and, in the event of the system being adopted council-wide, sees the potential of comparisons between different groups of Department.
Steve said "Best Value will have a major impact on The Valuers but we can be confident of achieving continuous improvement with the help of Eureka!"
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Eureka! Time Recording, Costing and Charging Software for Local Government and Public Bodies |