| Read time: 8 mins

Sandwell Council in the West Midlands operates 9 cemeteries and 2 crematoria sites that are managed by a dedicated, cross-functional Bereavement Services team of over 50 employees.

Having identified the need to switch from their existing software provider, the team’s been using PlotBox since September 2024 to manage their cemetery and crematorium operations.

We recently caught up with Bereavement Services Team Leader, Narinder Rana who talked us through their experience of PlotBox to date.

Narinder, thanks so much for joining us, please give us a brief overview of your role at Sandwell.

I am the Bereavement Services Administration Team Leader.  I head up the team that deals with the admin for all bereavement related services for the borough of Sandwell.

Currently, Sandwell has 2 crematoria - 1 in West Bromwich, where we are based, and 1 in Rowley Regis. 

We also have 9 cemeteries and 11 closed church yards. Therefore, we are a large burial and cremation authority. 

We have a wake facility and a coffee shop on site. We also offer a low-cost funeral service and operate a pet cemetery as well – therefore we offer a whole suite of bereavement related services.

Our Bereavement Services team is made up into 3 different areas - my team who deal with all the administration aspects, then 2 other team leaders, who manage the crematoria and the cemeteries.

What scope of services do you provide to your local communities?

We’re here to help people at the most difficult of times.

So, it’s important to mention that we offer our services 7 days a week, 364 days a year. The only day we don't offer burial or cremation services is on Christmas Day.

We obviously do the Monday to Friday services, but we also provide extended out of hours burials at our cemeteries where needed.

We provide bespoke services to all our different communities. Sandwell is quite diverse with regards to its communities, and we tailor our services to their needs accordingly.

And you’re continuing to grow?

We opened our ninth cemetery in Rowley Regis recently and are developing options for a new cemetery in West Bromwich as burial space in these towns run out. 

What did your systems look like prior to PlotBox?

We were coming up to around 20 years of having our previous locally hosted system, which ran on a server located in our head office over in Sandwell Council House.

In the time I have been here, 10-11 years, our suite of services has grown.  For example, at Sandwell Valley crematorium  we constructed a new building to host wakes, we introduced a Pet Memorial Garden services, a low-cost funeral service in partnership with a local funeral director, and opened a new coffee shop on site.

We came to a stage where our services were growing. We had a locally hosted system for around 20 years, and thought it was time to seek a specialised, cloud-based solution. 

We were looking for a cloud-based solution, not just to enable the council to meet its statutory duties as a burial and cremation authority, but to enable us to explore operational efficiencies, leaner processes, and more importantly, improved communication with our service users at what is a very difficult and key time in their life.

And when going out to tender, that’s what you were looking for?

Yes, that was the remit. We wanted a system that would accommodate remote working efficiencies, as well as data capture, reliability, compliance, and upgrades on the system, as well as accurate and flexible reports. A single source of information. 

Why did you choose PlotBox?

We collaborated with our Procurement services team and conducted an extensive search guided by our specific requirements. This process generated a shortlist of potential suppliers, for whom we arranged product demonstrations. During these sessions, it became apparent that not all providers could meet our comprehensive needs; however, PlotBox aligned closely with the majority of our criteria.

After viewing the PlotBox demonstration, we took the additional step of visiting another Council, as well as another local authority, to observe the system in operation. This gave us valuable, practical insight into the functionality and capabilities of PlotBox in a live setting.

What drew us to PlotBox was that we found a platform for recording and managing deceased and applicant records for all bereavement-related services - not just the burials and cremations.

We also wanted funeral directors to book online and to be able to upload their paperwork at the same time. We also wanted to include a wake facility and pet bookings, etc. 

Memorial sales, work orders and the renewals management were important. One of the other key factors that drew us in was having a Memorial Masons portal whereby masons could submit their applications online via a dedicated portal.

The memorial portal only went live last week, but we have received great feedback from our Memorial Masons so far.

The mapping of the cemeteries and crematoria was crucial, to capture all our plots - which was a challenge not only for PlotBox, but for us too.  

Both crematoria and some cemeteries have memorials – we are talking hundreds of thousands of memorials - we have started the process of capturing every single memorial and recording it in PlotBox.

What we are trying to do is improve the memorial services that we deliver - there are hundreds of plaques here in Sandwell Valley that are blank, that we can offer for resale for those families where location is of great sentimental importance. 

I feel it is important to stress that even though we have implemented PlotBox, the journey is just beginning for us.  We are reviewing current processes, getting to grips with the deeper functionality, and encouraging our teams to utilise it fully to reach the outcomes of streamlining our current processes and ensuring more efficiency in the way we deliver our services.

In the next 6 months we want to be able to utilise the workflows element of the system. 

Currently the communication between the 3 teams is via telephone, email and external documents therefore the workflow functionality was an essential element too.

What we want from PlotBox is a trustworthy Single Source of information.

But we can only get there if we interrogate the system to ensure that all the data captured in PlotBox is correct, accurate, compliant, consistent and dependable.

We will be working closely with the operational teams to develop and implement the work ticket system. 

All working or emails sent outside of PlotBox will hopefully disappear over the next few months. It will be collated within PlotBox.

You had your sites digitally mapped - what were some of the outcomes from that?

The feedback from the burials officer is that it has been a game changer.

The officer can go in at the time of booking, look at the plot and update it. The feedback we are getting across the 9 sites is that it is a lot easier for families too as information is available readily.

So, for example, we have superintendents in each cemetery - if they are on annual leave, and people want help locating graves, we won’t have to wait for them to come back.

With the mapping we found that even though we work in the office, we can go to the cemetery online and locate the grave, where we would not have been able to do that before PlotBox.

With manual maps, we would have to double or triple check everything, especially with so many sites.

I think it is important to say at this point, there were quite a lot of challenges with the mapping, due to the number of sites and the age of some of our cemeteries.

And now that we are live, PlotBox have been helpful in providing feedback with regards to any little bits of mapping that needs changing.

But in terms of feedback in relation to queries around family trees, it is easier.

We have families coming into reception saying, “Can you find my memorial?”. Before, we were printing off a map and trying to circle it. Now we can show them the mapping on a laptop, and they can go straight to it onsite.

How has PlotBox helped you to streamline your processes?

To be honest, I think it's removed a fair few documents and spreadsheets held outside the system. We had quite a lot of spreadsheets to hold data from our previous solution, particularly - in relation to memorials.

With regards to memorial administration, there were too many documents outside our previous solution, and I think that having the ability now to upload documents is beneficial for a more efficient delivery of services.

With accessibility online, if someone is on annual leave, you do not have to wait for that person to come back and ensures business continuity. Cremation administration is now completely digital.

Pre PlotBox, all of our funeral directors sent forms via email, which used to get moved around on our local shared drive quite a few times to get to the next stage. 

All the paperwork related to that deceased is uploaded against that record within PlotBox which I absolutely love.

Back to the vision of having a single source of information.

Therefore, if I click ‘Mrs. Smith’, everything related to ‘Mrs. Smith’, whether it be a cremation, whether they had a plaque afterwards, etc., It is all going to be in one place.

You are not going to various locations to find out. It also eliminates the risk of providing incorrect details should there be a query.

And given that it's updated in real time, staff, wherever that touch point is, are going to know it's always up to date?

Yes, this is useful when somebody phones us to query where ‘Section 19’ is in a particular cemetery, [where] previously it would be a call back. Now we are able to provide the information, in most cases, immediately. 

Tell us about your finance integration with PlotBox.

Previously we were extracting the data from our old management solution, then the invoices were produced by keying the same information into the corporate business system.

About 4 weeks after PlotBox went live, Sandwell Council moved to a new cloud software platform for finance and HR.

Therefore, we took this opportunity and undertook a piece of work where the invoicing details are generated in PlotBox with the ability to extract and import all the information into our corporate cloud software platform to produce a final invoice.

The double keying of information has been eliminated.

With regards to finance, I would say that the processes are leaner and more streamlined.

Obviously, there is still the task of checking all the data within PlotBox, but the exporting of financial data from PlotBox to our corporate system has been more streamlined and efficient for us. 

It has negated the need for double keying but also given the assurance that if we are raising invoices for funeral directors, for instance, it’s going to be more auditable.

Previously we had a lot of queries coming from funeral directors [in] the first two weeks of circulating invoices. I would say it has reduced these queries noticeably.

The finance element is one of our success stories - if you think about how many services we offer, finance is a huge task that the team undertakes on top of providing normal bereavement-related services.

With PlotBox, we obviously want to capture all the cremation, burial payments, etc, but we're working very hard to make sure all of the memorial information is recorded within the system too - especially with our responsibilities to provide data to the Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA), who capture all that information on a quarterly basis.

Also, capturing all payments from any wakes that we have offered through the diary system, which PlotBox will allow us to do, as well as our pet services.

So again, it goes back to that single source of information - that reporting functionality - if it's in PlotBox we should be able to report on it.

It is a work in progress, but the aim now is capturing everything we deliver.

Even a simple thing like ‘Mrs. Smith’ coming in and buying a flowerpot for a memorial. It should be captured - and this will be achieved by working continuously with PlotBox. We are raising tickets on how we can get through certain barriers or challenges that we might face.

You also implemented the PlotBox Funeral Director Portal - how’s that working in practice?

We would say that around 70% of our funeral directors are using it.

One of the biggest positives for us was the funeral directors being able to upload documents to their bookings. 

Again, it goes back to streamlining our processes to make them more efficient. Now that they can upload directly, we have reduced the number of calls and emails to the office. 

What did your post Go Live support look like?

We had a very positive and constructive visit from the Customer Success Manager.  It was extremely helpful because we had just gone live with our new accounting software. She supported us from a finance administration process perspective.

Would you say the implementation itself was a collaborative process?

Our team was very initiative-taking in that sense. We knew what we wanted and worked collaboratively with PlotBox to produce the solutions - it wasn’t us saying, “Well, we need to do this, what are you going to do about it?”.  It was, “This is what we want to do, maybe we could work this way?”. 

Working together was key.

I think the working relationship between Sandwell and PlotBox has been brilliant.

Has PlotBox being cloud-hosted helped in terms of data security and accessibility?

With regards to accessibility, if there is a need to work at another location, PlotBox provides us with that possibility as it is cloud hosted.

It is great that we can access a device anywhere should the need arise. This team is predominantly office based, but we have the flexibility to access PlotBox remotely should the need arise. 

So that is really good.

From my perspective, it is about accessibility for everybody, regardless of where you are working from - accessibility to statutory completed documents uploaded online and linked to the deceased’s record.

It is also great that everybody has their individual licenses. 

Our operation staff do not all have access to a laptop. The idea is to arrange handheld devices, so they can action their workflow there and then onsite, rather than having to go into the office.

And how has your team adapted to using PlotBox?

The team have adapted well as they had significant involvement during the data testing stage.

Do not get me wrong, there was some nervousness which is understandable. However, after using it for 10 months now, there is much more familiarity with their own roles within PlotBox.

Now, the goal is for them to start getting an idea of the screens that their peers are working in and the processes involved. This will provide us with business continuity and resilience. 

It was particularly important for the team to get the understanding on how and why specific tasks had to be completed a certain way within PlotBox. 

During the data testing stage, we interrogated our current processes and compared them to what PlotBox could offer. On occasions it was challenging to align both processes.

Once you have got that understanding, you will find that you can navigate around PlotBox much easier.

As a management team, our focus was to report more efficiently to help with performance and future planning. 

Are there any other elements of reporting that you’re finding useful?

We find the stored remains report especially useful as it gives us a snapshot of ashes that remain in our facilities. We can then work on obtaining dispersal instructions from the families.

We’re very proactive in communicating with our families - it's good to know exactly what we've got to address - what ashes we’ve still got in storage, and how we can have a dignified solution in removing them from our shelves - getting scattered or collected, or whatever the family's wishes are.

Creating a culture and norm of recording every instruction for a deceased’s ashes in one place.

Have any of your peers using PlotBox shared their experiences?

Yes, I went on risk assessment training with different cemeteries and crematoriums across the country, and along with another council crematorium operator who stated that PlotBox has been a dream compared to what they're using - we both got the impression that we were well ahead in terms of record administration.

And just finally, would you recommend PlotBox to other Bereavement Services operators?

Yes, we would.

Is digital transformation on your agenda? Talk to the team today and discover what we can do together.