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| Read time: 10 mins
“The PlotBox system is a modern and slick system created by individuals who clearly understand the complexities associated with administering burial and cremation services.
The training, advice and support is the best I have come across from any supplier. They are professional throughout and deliver excellence at every opportunity for their clients.
The system is simple to use and reliable. It being cloud based is a huge advantage as the data is always up to date and accurate and can be accessed easily on site using a mobile internet connection.”
Martin Birch FICCM (Dip), Operational Manager Bereavement & Registration Services for the City and County of Cardiff.
It’s been 18 months since the initial PlotBox implementation with Cardiff City Council. We caught up with Team leader Cardiff's Bereavement Services during a recent webinar. He talked us through the project scope and the practicalities of their transformation.
Here are some of our key takeaways.
Cardiff City Council looks after roughly 250 acres of cemetery land and carry out around 2,700 cremations a year.
The scope of the implementation project covered the 8 cemeteries and Thornhill Crematorium.
The project included the migration of records and data from the previous system that had been in place for a number of years. Within that, PlotBox was to create digital maps covering their full acreage.
As well as the PlotBox system, the PlotBox Funeral Director and Memorial Mason portals were also implemented to allow cemetery partners and stakeholders to interact with them online.
Prior to PlotBox Cardiff used an Access database management system. All sites were mapped with view to the mapping and the old Access system working together - something that never came into being.
In considering what was required, Garry says,
“It was then taking a step back and looking at the system as a whole, and looking at coming away from the system that we were using completely for something that was online.”
With many councils, the risk of data sitting on onsite servers carries risk…is something IT departments want to avoid.”
That made the notion of a cloud-based solution something that Cardiff were interested in.
The size of the sites and the fact that PlotBox was very different to their old system made choosing it a “no-brainer”, according to Garry.
To ensure due diligence, Cardiff went through the usual council procurement process. That involved putting together a large scoping document that was sent out to a number of providers.
They knew what they wanted, what their wish list was, what were the absolute must-haves and scored each provider accordingly.
The paper exercise was clear. There were some important questions that they wanted to ask, including mapping capabilities and cloud-hosting.
At PlotBox, we’re seeing a lot of local authorities approach us in similar situations - a solution that is based on Access for example, running into compliance and compatibility issues with Access being hosted on the internal council network.
It’s important to understand that not all clouds are equal - there’s a difference between a cloud-hosted system and a fully cloud-based system built from the ground up.
Data and mapping integration
For Cardiff, having the mapping embedded into their registry system was the second most important thing they wanted. The first was having access to all of the information coming through from their systems.
While CAD maps had been created, the systems wouldn’t talk to each other, and with no way to put them together, the priority was to get it all embedded into one system.
250 acres meant that it was a lot of work, but in the end, as Garry says,
“I can't tell you how much worth that is to us.”
At PlotBox, we’ve seen a shift from councils preferring to have internal control of systems, hosting them in house, to passing that responsibility out to suppliers as part of a risk adverse approach.
The project length was approximately 9 months, with some deliverables picked up after the initial implementation.
As pointed out by PlotBox Customer Success Manager, Dawn, getting live is the most important thing. After that, there will inevitably be learnings and questions.
“As we always say to customers, You can never really get to grips until you're live and doing it as part of your daily job.”
With some authorities having been using the same system for upwards of 20 years, moving from one system to another can be a very big change. Managing that change in the right way is important.
In terms of the implementation for Cardiff, everyone had to be on board - from office staff, through to grave diggers. According to Garry, “You need to lead them on a journey”.
For staff, forgetting what they did in the past and realising that information will look different can be difficult.
Part of overcoming this will be them understanding that the system will look different.
Carrying on that theme, “In PlotBox”, as CSM Dawn says, “I personally think the way information sits is really logical, but if you've been using another system, your idea of a logical [order will be different]. It's almost like retraining your brain.”
But whenever people can see what the outcome is going to be in terms of benefits - that this is going to make my life easier, it’s going to make my reporting easier, I'm going to be able to get information quicker from here, it will be easier to win them round
“It’s about having [the] information you have in your system going to the right part of PlotBox," says Garry.
The amount of information held by cemeteries is huge, so post-implementation it’s helpful to have a Customer Success Manager to field questions that will help you to get the most from the system and maximise your return on investment.
Garry advises, “Overthink it, really overthink everything that you want the system to do. Be prepared. You'll need to [be].”
Post-implementation issues can be commonplace with any digital transformation.
Garry felt that it was important to give staff time to get to know the new system, acknowledging that day jobs are busy, and so to allow them time aside on a training site.
In this way, issues such as double numbering could be picked up and sorted out in good time.
According to Garry, the Funeral Director and Memorial Mason portals are providing real benefits.
Garry says, “You can book out your diaries really easily…the online booking is a dream.”
That will be especially helpful for funeral directors who may need to work from home, for example, in the case of another mass fatality event [such as COVID].
With just an internet connection and a mobile device or laptop, they will be able to continue to view calendars and request provisional bookings for families.
That assurance, Gary says, “Is brilliant.”
Also big news for Cardiff’s cemeteries will be the ability to upload photographs of memorials to PlotBox, helping to enhance the quality of their records database.
In terms of enhanced customer service, the ability for office staff to easily look up information via digital maps linked directly to individual records has been “huge”.
When someone calls into the office inquiring after a relative, staff can now quickly find who they’re looking for and even print off directions for them.
With systems that are reliant on paper maps, time spent travelling back and forth to plots can take up a large portion of a team's day.
With that comes an ‘opportunity cost’, i.e. what could teams be doing in that time?
That might be, for example, moving ahead with more memorialisation options, or other initiatives that they don't have the capacity to look at the minute.
Something on every local authorities mind right now is, “What else could we be doing if we had more time?”.
As Garry says, “There are more services that we want to provide. We want to become more commercial…we know that we have to, because if we don't, we're not just standing still…we're going to be off the map.”
In this way, the mobility PlotBox provides will be helpful, for example, when assistant cemetery managers take people onsite to select memorials - they can now put a mark on it right there and then.
In terms of priorities, form a reporting perspective, Cardiff is currently working with PlotBox on integrations with their SAP financial management software.
Gary advises, “If you're looking to implement your invoicing through PlotBox…find [your council finance person] as soon as you make this decision…get [them] set to completely understand what's needed and what comes out of PlotBox.”
Ultimately, as Garry suggests, for councils, it’s about getting the systems that will do the most for them.
That means making sure you've got the upfront work carried out, talking to finance and getting all of your ducks in a row.
Get more learnings from our conversation with Garry. Click below to watch the webinar in full:
Enhance community services with digital solutions. Discover how deathcare management technology can optimize council strategies.
We explore why accurate cemetery maps and burial records are important for Local Authorities from the perspective of those who gain value from them.
Funeral directors share how the PlotBox Funeral Director Portal has helped to transform customer service having been implemented by Wirral Council.