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Q. Why did you start using Socitm’s benchmarking service?
I have been with Argyll and Bute Council since 2004. We started using Socitm benchmarking in 2005, because we needed to be more data-driven in decision making. We use it to compare our business processes and performance against industry best practice, and measure how we perform against other local authority ICT services to identify improvement opportunities in our service. Essentially our aim is to continually improve and the benchmarking service is a tremendous help with that.
Q. What is your experience of working with Socitm?
We have built up a great relationship with Socitm over almost 20 years and have been more than satisfied with the benchmarking service. The consultants and other people we engage with are very professional and knowledgeable. I have seen three iterations of the online system we use to submit our results, which shows Socitm staff are always working in the background to improve key systems to help us.
Benchmarking includes an extensive survey that covers many performance measures from assets and estates through to costs and financial measures, which are essential for comparing and improving our service. It has grown over the years with a lot of new metrics. We find that Socitm is very open around discussing changes and additions to both the benchmarking and the user satisfaction surveys, and the benchmarking survey is fairly reflective of the ever-changing ICT environment and the demands that puts on a business. Every year that we participate in benchmarking and participation surveys we always have a post-results meeting with a Socitm consultant, usually face-to-face, and they engage with us, asking what we would like to see in future. We don’t find it too costly, either.
Q. How do you use the findings of a benchmarking exercise?
There is always room for improvement in an ICT service but we find it is not really about comparing yourself to others and worrying about that. For example, benchmarking results show that the network provision is much poorer in Argyll and Bute than it is for local authorities in Scotland’s big cities. We have a huge geographically diverse area which includes dozens of islands, and presents huge challenges and costs when delivering connectivity to more than 80 schools and hundreds of offices, depots and ferry terminals. A city-based authority with a couple of main offices and some fast and cost-effective fibre services is going to have much lower networking costs than our council
Seeing the data is key to starting that process of analysis, comparing our results with the best or most effective and then seeking improvements. Our purpose in benchmarking is to measure ourselves as our customers see us – there is no point in thinking we are making improvements without asking our customers. It is not only about comparing ourselves to others, it is more about making sure that we are meeting the standards expected of our customers and learning from others in how they deliver improvements in these metrics year on year. If you keep doing that, you should compare well against others.
I’m not saying that gathering the data is easy, but Socitm helps with the way it lays out the surveys, which makes it intuitive and straightforward to use. Turning gap identification into service improvement is the real hard work, all underpinned by benchmarking data. Our aim across the council is to use data to help make better decisions and we are pleased that benchmarking is a major contributor towards achieving that goal
Q. How would you summarise the ways in which you use benchmarking?
We find that benchmarking data is there to support us in our efforts to improve our service delivery. We have found that you shouldn’t be too hung-up on your results versus other organisations. What you need to focus on is identifying the gaps in your performance, then use that to focus internally on improving in those areas. If improvements are implemented, your next benchmarking exercise should see a better set of results. As an example, your service desk may have the best time to fix across all Scottish authorities but you may see a decline in performance against the results of two or four years ago. We use that data to help establish an improvement plan that’s more likely to help us to return to higher standard levels.
The more years of data and results you build up, the better you can track your own improvement. We have the luxury of having been through about 10 benchmarking and satisfaction surveys over alternate years across a 20 year period. The output has played a vital part when devising each iteration of our IT and digital strategy over the years, as we used the data to seek investment for service improvements from the council, and we strengthened business cases with data, benchmarking, performance, and gap analysis to show how we have improved.
See also: How Argyll and Bute Council has used Socitm benchmarking to improve its service desk operation