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| BECS 4.0 - Customer Successes |
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BECS provides real, tangible benefits for your team. Whether it is saving your valuable time, bridging a gap in benefits expertise or empowering your customers to make informed choices, BECS simplifies and improves your business processes.
Read on below to find out how other organisations have benefited from using BECS as an integral part of their e-Government delivery strategy:
www.manchester.gov.uk
- Population: 392,819
- Households: 167,451 (28.6% Council, 10.8% HA)
- Unemployment: 5%
- Annual HB Claims: 70,000
Manchester City Council serves 33 wards, of which 27 are in the top 10% most deprived areas in the UK. The Council processes c. £250M of Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit claims per year. The average time to complete a claim is 55 days.
What do staff think of BECS?
A Manchester Housing representative said, "We get positive feedback from staff. They say it is 'thorough' and asks every question. It is also totally accurate..."
"Experienced Housing staff will often know if a tenant is entitled to full benefit or not, for example if the tenant is on income support. In these cases staff may not need to do a calculation. But otherwise it is used exclusively (i.e. staff don't use any other package or system to calculate). BECS especially comes into its own in cases where part-benefit is likely, rather than in obvious cases where there is a full entitlement or no entitlement. It's invaluable for staff who are NOT benefits experts or those who have had no training at all. It is much easier to use than the old mainframe package, which required benefits knowledge, and wasn't comprehensive. The old package was not step-by-step or plain language and BECS is totally accurate."
Debra Dalton, Rent Recovery Officer at Manchester City council described BECS as "extremely useful... easy to use... good step-by-step guidance... I like the way you can alter one answer without starting all over again."
How do staff use it?
"BECS is used by staff when signing up new tenants. Tenants are interviewed, in person or over the phone, as staff go through calculator. Staff need to advise these tenants of benefit eligibility. The calculated figures advise tenants how much rent to pay until the actual claim comes through. BECS is used when tenants contact us or we contact them about rent arrears or rent payments . You will see an adviser using the calculator if you come into the office for interview about paying rent and we use it over the phone."
How many advisers use it?
Benefits staff can use the Calculator on the intranet. However, it is used by many more people than the Town Hall staff. Different housing offices are using BECS, that's 10 local services teams (they use it when they sign-on new tenants), 4 specialist rent teams (used for arrears and general rent advice - change of circumstances etc.) and several teams working with homeless people. It is hard to say how many individuals use it, but it is used daily in all of the aforementioned offices.
"The Internet version is also used by housing organisations who are now managing former council homes, e.g. Willow Park, Eastlands Homes, Grove Village. "
What do members of the public think of the service?
"It was very well received at a training day I did with tenants. We have promoted the service with leaflets, posters and as part of a mailout to all 55,000 tenants about our Internet services. The publication substantially increased the number of visits to the Housing site."
Tangible benefits of having the Calculator?
"Because BECS is so comprehensive, we are more confident of being right first time. This means giving correct payment information, which avoids arrears later on. The ability to help customers who have a query on a calculation they have already started is very useful."
A Manchester City Council Spokesman states, "The online benefits calculator has been a great success in Manchester. Unlike mainframe alternatives, staff don't need special training or benefits expertise to use it.
And it is far superior to other online systems because it's so comprehensive. It works accurately in almost every possible circumstance, so it's much more than just a rough guide. Users can't miss out a vital detail because the step-by-step plain-language questions cover every angle.
By being so thorough it saves a lot of time in the long run. Right-first-time calculations mean avoiding rent arrears later on. We can give tenants the information they need with complete confidence in the calculator's accuracy.
Oh yes... our customers like it too!"
www.selby.gov.uk
- Population: 76,468
- Households: 32,670 (10.7% Council, 2.7% HA)
- Unemployment: 2.5%
- Annual HB Claims: 7,741
- HB/CTB Advisers: 28
- BECS Users: 55
"We were attracted to BECS as soon as we saw it." says Susan Williams, Benefits Calculator Project Manager at Selby District Council."
"We had researched several ready-reckoners, entitlement calculators and full blown benefits systems, like those from SX3, Anite, Ferret and Ovaltech. But they were either too lightweight or overly complicated, not to mention the price of some of the systems. We needed a solution that would allow our advisers to provide entitlement advice from lots of different locations. And if it allowed claimants to check their own circumstances, even better."
"BECS was clearly in a class of its own. We have over 60 separate parishes and 6 different Council tax bandings, so the calculator had to be adjusted for these. From the off, Team Netsol was responsive to our requests and tailored BECS very quickly to our requirements. We felt reassured by the fact that BECS is backed up by Manchester City Council's benefits experts and the BECS team at Team Netsol, and Sun Microsystems on the hardware side."
"We serve households that are dispersed over a wide area, so availability over the Web was one of the key criteria. As we don't have a lot of expert benefits advisers in-house, BECS was ideal because it is easy to use and covers every type of calculation we need in a straightforward way. It was definitely the pick of the bunch and we found the costs of implementing BECS affordable. It is definitely cheaper and easier than employing extra staff with good benefits expertise."
"The support provided has been superb. We just pick up the phone knowing that the BECS Team will handle our requests quickly. We were very impressed with the way that it only took two weeks from ordering to get the Web calculator up and running with all our rules and corporate styling. Our intranet calculator came on its own box and was dropped into our network by the BECS engineer. It was installed and our staff were trained in less than a day... BECS definitely gets the thumbs up from us."
A Selby DC Benefits Officer adds, "...because more and more people are now asking for Trial Assessments the Calculator has become a major asset in our Customer Services department."
Contact the BECS Team right now to find out how BECS can benefit you today
All statistics provided by National Statistics Office, based on 2001 Census data
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