Cardiff Council is aligning its IT strategy with a shift towards self-service government

The City of Cardiff Council is moving onto SAP’s customer service cloud in a bid to streamline customer service operations and deliver budget savings, the organisations announced this week.

The three-year project will see Cardiff Council work with SAP to move onto its customer services cloud, which is powered by the company’s in-memory compute platform HANA.

The Council’s goal is to create a digital self-service portal that will enable residents to interact online with municipal services, which will significantly reduce administrative costs according to the Council.

“The public service mandate of ‘do more with less’ is not going away, but for us, it’s an opportunity to bring our thriving city into the digital age in a way that will bring us long-term financial savings” said Ross Maude, senior enterprise architect at Cardiff Council.

Indeed the Council is facing £124m in budget cuts over the next three years, and to deliver those savings without impacting the services delivered to residents the Council is looking to increase automation – which is where cloud services comes into play.

“The services we provide are important for everyone from the elderly, to university students and public sector workers, and ensuring we’re still able to maintain the level and quality of service we have today despite our financial pressures is crucial. Our relationship with SAP means that together we’re able to implement an integrated cloud-based solution that brings all of our systems together allows us to focus on the growing needs of Cardiff residents,” Maude added.

Cormac Watters, managing director, SAP UK and Ireland said: For local authorities like Cardiff Council, finding ways to minimise costs is their number one priority. Coupled with a young, digitally-advanced demographic, the Council has taken a bold approach to meet today’s and tomorrow’s challenges”

“It will also support the delivery of new digital services geared to the highly-connected user, providing greater choice, more self-service options, better access and flexibility, resulting in improved user adoption and unlocking cost savings at every turn. This is essential at a time when budgets are under substantial pressure,” Watters said.