Walsall Council

Challenge

Walsall Council is transforming the way its public services are delivered through its PROUD Programme. This will ensure that every service – from social care and finance, to street cleaning and planning – is delivered as effectively and efficiently as possible.

 A Cloud First strategy is a key component of this transformation approach and one that was brought into sharp focus when the time came for Walsall Council to replace a legacy document management application. The software was supporting high volume print services, including council tax invoices, election polling cards and other customer correspondence.

Solution

The National Public Sector Framework for Multifunctional Devices and Associated Print Services and Supplies provided Walsall Council with the opportunity to access a compliant solution to meet their requirements.

Konica Minolta already provided more than 100 multi-function devices (MFDs) and associated software at multiple sites across the borough. They recommended that the council deploy PlanetPress on one of their fully-managed Konica Minolta cloud servers. PlanetPress is a complex system – it manages the printing of tens of thousands of council tax bills, for example, and often needs to print high volumes of polling cards at short notice.

 It resides on a Konica Minolta cloud server, located in a highly resilient UK-based Konica Minolta data centre. The council links to the server via a secure VPN connection. The Konica Minolta team was responsible for the server deployment, integration and subsequent training.

Benefits

·       Digital transformation: The hosted print solution aligns closely with the Walsall PROUD programme for service modernisation and efficiency. Delivering benefits in many areas:

·       Quality of service: The new service is available 24x7x365, ensuring council tax and other important document services continue uninterrupted, with no compromise to the day-to-day operations of the council.

·       Efficiency: As a hosted service, there is no up-front capital expenditure by the council in hardware or support. The service is provided as a fixed-fee, covering hardware, connectivity, security and ongoing maintenance.

·       Innovation: The managed solution supports the Cloud First strategy which allows the IT team to focus on other development such as public service innovation.

·       Agility: The cloud management framework provides greater operational agility and the flexibility to identify, analyse and respond quickly to changes in PlanetPress document workflow.

·       Data security and governance: The service is hosted in a highly resilient data centre, with data backed up in two locations. The data centres are UK-based, supporting the council’s governance objectives regarding data privacy and security.

·       Peace of mind: The service requires no intervention from council staff. They simply connect to the PlanetPress workflow automation through a VPN line. All issues of server upgrades, patching and other maintenance are conducted transparently by Konica Minolta.

The Case Study is an excerpt from a wider piece originally written by Konica Minolta, to read the full version click here .