Verto Case Study: working with the City of Wolverhampton Council

The city of Wolverhampton lies at the heart of the Black Country and is one of three cities in the West Midlands region. The city and council are experiencing a period of unprecedented growth and transformation, highlighted recently when the City of Wolverhampton Council was awarded ‘Local Authority of the Year’ at the MJ Awards, 2017.

The council serves a population of around 250,000 across 20 wards. It has a mission to ‘work as one to serve our city,’ and a vision that by 2030 ‘Wolverhampton will be a prosperous and inclusive city that celebrates its diversity and heritage and plays its part on the regional, national and international stage.’

Like all local authorities, the City of Wolverhampton Council has a complex structure made up of the full council and its various committees, directorates and services.

The council works with a wide range of other organisations through several key partnerships, including the local strategic partnership for the area and the West Midlands Combined Authority.

It has to report regularly on its progress in delivering its plans, both within the council itself and to its various partners.

What the City of Wolverhampton Council wanted to achieve 

The City of Wolverhampton Council’s Projects and Programmes Team currently produces highlight reports on 59 projects and 32 workstreams. These are developed into an overall dashboard and shared monthly with the council’s wider leadership team.

Prior to using Verto the Projects and Programmes Team were preparing these reports manually. Now, with Verto, the process is automated, which makes best use of officer time and ensures information is prepared for senior managers in an efficient and cost-effective way.

How we’re helping the City of Wolverhampton Council achieve its goal 

When we started working with the council in 2015, we worked alongside the Projects and Programmes Team to configure Verto in line with their project management process, from a project’s initial proposal right through to its close.

We also worked with them to set up standard reports which can be produced at the press of a button.

“The team from TMI provided excellent customer service. They prioritised our change requests and are good at turning things round when we need them to – straight away if they can. And they use our feedback to help them develop Verto so we, and others, can get more from it.” 

Laura Palmer, Portfolio Delivery Manager, the City of Wolverhampton Council

How the City of Wolverhampton Council is benefiting from using Verto

Since using Verto the City of Wolverhampton Council has seen a number of benefits. Perhaps the most significant is that they now have a controlled management and workflow process across the council.

With Verto all the council’s programme and project data is in one place. This means the Projects and Programmes Team can support project managers and projects officers from start to finish. As Harpreet Riyat, the council’s Project and Resources Manager says, “Verto is very clear and easy to use. Everything is in front of you on one screen and it guides you through the whole process so it’s very easy to learn.”

The Projects and Programmes Team have established a bi-weekly Project Assurance Group (PAG). This has helped programmes and projects become more visible and made it easier for the group to establish links, find commonalities and break down barriers. As a result they have also been able to identify both financial and time savings.

The increased visibility of programmes and projects also makes it easier for the PAG to agree which proposals should proceed. And once projects are up and running, the Projects and Programmes Team can quickly and easily produce monitoring reports which show progress, outcomes and risks.

Because Verto is based in the cloud it allows for mobile working so staff can easily work on it where and when they need to. This also makes it easy for people to collaborate across partnership projects and programmes. They can then use Verto’s instant messaging tool to communicate with each other.

Harpreet Riyat also commented that using Verto has substantially reduced the Projects and Programmes Team’s need to use paper.

We continue to work with the City of Wolverhampton Council. Recently we supported their move to VertoPro and resolved small technical issues very quickly.

We are also due to set up and roll out a single sign-on which means users no longer need to log in to Verto with a user name and password. Instead Verto will automatically be available to them when they log on to the council’s system. This has removed a potential barrier to using Verto and encouraged more consistent use of the tool.

The Projects and Programmes Team would like to develop more intuitive reporting so are currently reviewing our latest reporting options. We will then configure the reports they’d like to use to suit their needs.

To find out more about how Verto can help your local authority please call us on 0118 334 6200 or message us here.