Liverpool MBC: Improving performance in income maximisation services
“With the recent Welfare Reforms and the difficult economic climate, we’ve seen an increase of 30-35% in the number of clients using our services. Using Case Manager has meant that not only have we been able to manage this increase in workload, but we’ve actually improved our performance at the same time, both in terms of the time taken to manage a client’s case and the outcome achieved for the client.”
Martin Jungnitz, Assistant Director, Revenues and Benefits.
Liverpool Metropolitan Borough Council’s (MBC) Benefits Service team provides support and information about all aspects of entitlement to state benefits, grants and services to clients across Liverpool.
Case Manager is used by around 100 caseworkers and contact centre staff.
The issues
Liverpool MBC needed a stable, reliable system to manage their workflow and ensure the quality and consistency of the services it provides.
They also wanted to be able to deal with more queries at the first point of contact, freeing up more time for their Benefit Maximisation Advisors to provide more specialist services and support.
The Solution: Case Manager
Liverpool MBC chose to replace their existing system with Case Manager. They worked with IIZUKA to examine their workflow processes and configure the software to reflect their requirements.
The system is used by their specialist Benefit Maximisation Advisors to manage the entire Income Maximisation process and also by Contact Centre staff, who can access the details and documents they need to manage more queries at the first point of contact.
Since implementing Case Manager, Liverpool MBC have managed an increase in clients accessing their services of around 30-35% and increased the amount of benefits generated for their clients from £6.9M to £9.35M. They have also reduced the average end to end time to set up and conduct a detailed benefits maximisation check by 40%.
The team found the system intuitive and simple to use. Although implementing Case Manager meant a significant change to their processes, the majority of staff adopted the new system easily, with classroom based training provided by Liverpool MBC’s ‘super-users’ and support from IIZUKA.
Martin believes that Case Manager has not only improved their service to clients, but also improved the performance of their internal team:
“We’ve seen a significant improvement in the results gained for clients. Before Case Manager, we generated £6.9M in benefits for our clients, now that figure has increased to £9.35M. While this improvement isn’t wholly due to Case Manager, of course, the improvements in the workflow processes, the ease of access to all the information our staff need to work with a client and the significant reduction in the time taken to manage the end to end process has provided a huge benefit to our business.”
Client feedback
“Implementing Case Manager was relatively easy, particularly thanks to the training and support provided by the team at IIZUKA, which was as good as we could have asked for. The team at IIZUKA were flexible and responsive, working with us to make sure that Case Manager did exactly what we needed it to.
We now have a reliable, secure, stable system which is helping us deliver a quality level of service to our clients and we’re continuing to work with IIZUKA to develop the system, particularly to add in functions for our contact centre staff such as appointment booking, rescheduling and cancellations and to allow clients to submit referrals directly into the system through the Council’s website.”
Joanne Heyes, Liverpool MBC’s Benefit Maximisation and Take-Up Manager, added:
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