The Office of the Revenue Commissioners has an ongoing commitment to improve service to clients and as part of this mandate needed to `enhance turnaround time for correspondence. They had a manual correspondence process which was proving inefficient and time consuming.
The system allows case workers anywhere in the country to access the correspondence from any client at the touch of a button, without the need to refer to a paper file. The Inpute team leveraged expertise in intelligent document capture and forms recognition to deliver this solution.
“We chose Inpute because of their experience and because they could provide a full solution; a one-stop shop… it has proven to be a very good value-for-money solution.”
IC project manager, Revenue Commissioners
The Office of the Revenue Commissioners continues to process large volumes of postal correspondence on a daily basis. As part of their customer service charter, revenue is committed to optimising the turnaround time for this correspondence.
PAYE workers are by far the revenue’s largest customer base, and there is an ongoing commitment to improve service to these clients.
Inpute worked with revenue to provide a solution including scanning software and associated hardware. This allows revenue offices throughout the country to scan received documents such as letters and forms directly into a revenue developed bespoke iC (integrated contacts) system (a central database of all contacts with revenue), thereby providing office-wide online access to all correspondence.
The solution deployed is based on the WorkStream capture module and offers a robust scanning solution enabling users to quickly scan data directly into backend workflow systems. The solution has proven to be very reliable and efficient..
Building on this success, Inpute expanded the functionality of the system by integrating a handwriting reading solution that they had previously supplied to revenue. For a selection of forms, the system now automatically extracts and validates PPS numbers from handwritten correspondence, allowing automatic indexing of these documents and instant routing to the appropriate workflow queue.
According to Pat Hubbard, iC project manager, “We chose Inpute because of their experience and because they could provide a full solution; a one-stop shop for all the necessary hardware and software that could be tailored specifically to our needs. And it has proven to be a very good value-for-money solution.”
With 23 scan stations in 17 disparate offices throughout the country and about 1,400 revenue staff using the system it has greatly enhanced Revenue’s ability to process claims and queries promptly.
The system allows case workers anywhere in the country to access the correspondence from any client at the touch of a button, without the need to refer to a paper file.
“For us that was a huge benefit”, says Mr Hubbard, “that our case workers can access correspondence regardless of the point of entry. The main benefit of this streamlining is speed. Because of Inpute’s solution, we are achieving a far better service for our clients, with much faster turnaround times”, Mr Hubbard adds.
The information is right there on the screen, he says. If a client asks, “Did you receive my form?” or something like that, the operator has the answer immediately. He also points out that generating reports is much easier with the new system.
We can generate real statistics in real time. It lets us compare our performance across the organisation and target resources appropriately.
“Like the private sector, public sector organisations have been under pressure to adapt many citizen services for remote and virtual access. Not only did we quickly deliver remote correspondence capabilities, but we also improved customer response times to improve the experience for Irish citizens.”
CEO, Inpute
