THE CHALLENGE

The Human Resource Service team were looking for a new, more effective case management system. They also wanted a way to manage personnel files (p files) for 6000 current and former employees within Liverpool City Council (LCC). They needed to record all actions, communications and outcomes in the system. They also needed to create, edit and resolve cases directly in the system without having to use other applications. 

The personnel filing system had to provide every LCC employee with a personnel file stored securely. HR users needed a simple search method to find p-files by surname, first name, oracle pay reference number and other key personal information. 

 THE SOLUTION

cBrain won the contract to provide Liverpool City Council with an integrated case management system. The idea was to provide a single working environment for HR users instead of having to access multiple systems to complete basic tasks. cBrain’s business consultants spent time ‘shoulder-surfing’ with HR users to understand their daily work scenarios and the issues they faced. 

We learned that users spent a lot of time copying data between different systems. For example, they used email, Excel spreadsheets, shared folders, a legacy document management system, and Oracle HR. It was hard for users to understand where the latest versions of documents were. There was no easy way to get an overview of what cases were in progress and what the status was. In the end, the users had developed a system of manually updating a core spreadsheet to let each other and management know what was happening.

cBrain used the F2 Cloud Service to quickly configure a prototype (Alpha) of the main process flows. We then worked with super-users to refine the process directly in the working software. In parallel, work began on integration with the Council’s Exchange, Active Directory, and Oracle HR services. This was introduced in a Beta phase. This enabled automatic mail import, Single Sign-On for users, and automated import of Oracle personnel data. The 6000 personnel files were migrated from existing shared drives to individual employee cases in F2. New metadata was added to ensure they were filed correctly and easy to search. Employee master records were created in F2.

3 months after starting the project, users were live on the system. cBrain consultants helped by ‘floorwalking’ to spot any areas where the process could be improved or refined upon.