U.K. Child Support Agency Achieves Breakthrough Gains in Compliance, Collections and Customer Service

As one of the U.K.’s largest governmental social services agencies, the Child Support Agency (CSA) provides financial resources for the protection and well-being of 1.5 million children under the Department for Work and Pensions and U.K law. Careful study of CSA’s case management operations and systems revealed:

• More than 225,000 children’s cases were delayed in processing due to missing application information, income/earning discrepancies and credit scoring problems.
• Twenty-five thousand new cases monthly resulted in file duplication errors.
• Inaccurate payment reporting was disrupting funds being sent to thousands of benefit accounts for eligible parents.
• Of the 2,500 telephone calls received per hour from parents, 25-30% dropped due to dated technology, routing limitations and lengthy queue/wait times.
• Agency collection services captured only 25% of child support monies due from parents.

These and other issues underscored CSA’s mandate from the U.K. Secretary of State for Work and Pensions to a multi-year Operational Improvement Plan. The Plan’s goals were to measure and invest in greater operational efficiency, clear the backlog of cases, and step up enforcement to parents.

Redesign Speeds CSA Case Management and Cash Flow
Quality Deployment (QD) was engaged to redesign, architect, build and deploy the processes for CSA’s 10,000 user case management system. QD provided its skilled team of industry, business engineering, and technology experts within CSA to create and implement each phase of the redesign. Within 18 months of implementation this approach delivered many process improvements to speed CSA’s cash flow.

1. Each part of CSA’s “application to decision” process has been integrated into an event-driven architecture using 256 distinct scenarios. Case workers and parents know exactly where they are in CSA’s process, and what information or action is needed to move their application forward. Proactive correction and check pointing eliminates data errors from being introduced into the applicant’s file and automatically directs it to the next CSA user to drive efficiency. QD’s innovative event-driven architecture speeds accurate file completion. Case workers no longer research errors or track progress via exception reports.
   
   Results: More than 80% of new cases now meet the 12 week target compared to just 32% under the old system. CSA also exceeded its goal to resolve its delayed case backlog (from 225,000 to 75,000) 6 months ahead of plan.
   
   
2. QD designed a new B2B architecture between CSA and major credit scoring suppliers. This provides case workers with accurate risk profiles so they can offer customized (and more realistic) payment terms to parents. With immediate access to parent work history, pay, and creditworthiness data, CSA has dramatically stepped up parent compliance and collections.
   
   Results: CSA collected more than £157 million additional payments in arrears, increasing the arrears collected as a percentage of amounts due from 25% to 63%. CSA’s collections increased 6% overall making it a one of the world’s top performing child support agencies.
   
   
3. CSA has 5 million annual inbound calls. To drive efficiency into CSA’s call management process, QD designed and implemented a new intelligent routing architecture triggered by caller category and need. This directs inbound calls to the appropriate function without repetitive transfers or time-consuming repeats of the caller’s intake information.
   
   Results: CSA reduced caller wait time from 1 minute 40 seconds to 18 seconds and increased its calls answered/calls available performance from 84% to 99% to increase customer satisfaction.
   
   “… The figures reflect the sustained progress we have made since launching the CSA’s Operational Improvement Plan in 2006. We are now well on course to meet – and in some cases comfortably exceed – the March 09 targets set for us by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions when the plan was launched. More importantly we are making more difference for more children."
   STEPHEN GERAGHTY, CSA CHIEF EXECUTIVE
   
   Overall CSA Gains: Program reach assisted in lifting more than 100,000 additional children out of poverty while collected or arranged payments increased to £1 billion annually. Compliance, collections and customer service metrics set new highs during the transition with a steady case workload and 10% staffing reduction.

Technologies
Tibco BusinessWorks, I-Process, and BAM Application were used for business process management, business activity monitoring and service oriented architecture (SOA) for workflow automation.

Service Delivery Team
Quality Deployment is improving profit and cash flow at the world's most successful companies using our proprietary approach to performance improvement through cash flow analysis. Combining unmatched industry depth, technology breadth and implementation experience, we join forces with customers to help leading businesses become even better. With delivery successes in the US, UK, EU, and Asia, the company serves a wide variety of Fortune 500 sized commercial and public sector organizations. Contact us to learn more.