Salford City Council
Background
Salford is a busy, dynamic city, a thriving cultural, economic and residential location covering 37 square miles of stunning urban living and open spaces, home to over 220,000 people proud to call themselves Salfordians. It responsible for providing their citizens with public amenities such as schools, social services and environmental health as well as administrative functions like licensing. Throughout all its activities, Salford is committed to saving taxpayers money being saving time, resources and increasing efficiencies.
Before
Prior to GS installing a powerful RMS retail EPOS system, the sales of birth, marriage and death certificates were manually written down in traditional ledgers. Approximately 60 births and deaths are registered per day with 30 minutes allocated to each registration. In one recent quarter, the council had 473 marriages and civil partnerships. Sales figures for each office were added daily, weekly, monthly and year end, a labour intensive and time- consuming process at the busy offices.
After
Salford City Council now runs fully automated and streamlined register offices which include chip 'n' pin facilities and an interface with the council's financial systems for exporting sales data. Work that once took a couple of hours can be done in 15 minutes.
'GS Systems is our EPOS partner of choice. They have worked with us before on a number of projects including the Salford Museum & Art Gallery and Odsall Hall. What we like about them as a business is their willingness to fit around what we want and to accommodate our requirements. They willingly accept our thinking and use their expertise to everyone’s advantage. The EPOS solution installed in our register offices was integrated much faster than we expected and feeds seamlessly into our central financial systems. We’re now looking at other opportunities of automating and streamlining other areas within the city council and its five districts where we take cash or card payments from the public.'
Geoff Topping, Assistant Director of Corporate Services, Salford City Council
'Under the old manual system all seven register offices would cash up every night. One person in each office would reconcile our daily activities. The same exercise was repeated for weekly and monthly reconciliations and the annual accounts. We used old legal ledgers, filled them in by hand. Cash was collected, counted and banked. The cashing-up process would often start at 3.30pm.
Now what was once two hours work can be done in 15 minutes, freeing seven members of staff each day to focus on other tasks, ensuring we can provide a better service.
One of the major areas they excelled was training, covering the terminals and the back office to ensure we were all fully aware of how the system worked. We were able to go live earlier than planned and feel very confident with the technology at an early stage.
Andrea Matthias, Registrar, Salford City Council
'The key driver for change was the fact individual local authority's were now responsible for managing the licensing of births, marriages and deaths rather than the General Registrer Office. As this was a great opportunity for us to streamline old-fashioned manual practices, we looked at various options before deciding EPOS was the most cost-effective and efficient choice.
We asked GS Systems to help us apply its software solutions to our register offices and interface with our existing financial infrastructure. Our idea was to have registrar PCs linked to chip ‘n’ pin handhelds and printers for receipts in the offices where certificates are being drawn up and prepared. We wanted to ensure speed of service while respecting the privacy of the people wanting certificates.
Throughout, GS was very professional and thorough. They started with a fact-finding mission to see how we worked, how we had different charging structures, which are never as straightforward as everyone assumes. The pricing structure is quite complex and there’s a lot to understand.
Now, not only have we now speeded up working practices but we have also enhanced our accountability. The EPOS system fully records all transactions, when the sale was made and by whom. We can run reports in a matter of seconds. Our ability to track and audit our activities has brought unprecedented control to the way we run and manage our register offices.'
Tom Garrett, E-Trading Development Officer, Salford City Council
Case Studies Menu
Client: Salford City Council
Business: Council
Purchased: RMS retail EPOS system
"The EPOS system fully records all transactions, when the sale was made and by whom. We can run reports in a matter of seconds. Our ability to track and audit our activities has brought unprecedented control to the way we run and manage our register offices."
Tom Garrett, E-Trading Development Officer, Salford City Council
