Appendix: Summary of current workflow management limitations and planned improvements
Ministry of Social Development: Managing the recovery of debt.
| Current workflow management system limitations | Planned improvements to be made with introduction of new system |
|---|---|
| Even allocation of cases between debt management officers limits specialisation of tasks in the Collections Unit. Debt management officers required to use three separate partly paper-based reports and workbooks to manage their caseloads. |
The new system will introduce the ability to allocate work by case (for example, a new debt) or by specific task to be completed on a debt case (such as contacting the client). This will give the Collections Unit greater flexibility to specialise debt management officers on different tasks if they want. The three separate caseload sources for debt management officers will be replaced by a single system using TRACE. In the new system, the Collections Unit or managers/supervisors will be able to automatically prioritise task lists. |
| No client profiling, with all cases treated the same. | New debts/cases loaded into the new system will sort clients into different debtor profiles according to any available information about their previous debt and repayment history from TRACE. |
| Debt management officers are required to manually search the Ministry's different computer systems for any new information about clients. | The new system will automatically receive information updates and notifications from the Ministry's other computer systems and data matching operations. It is intended that debt management officers will spend less time manually searching for new information, allowing more time for actual debt recovery work. Debt management officers will get only debts that require work (rather than cases where the Ministry's systems can automatically send out letters to clients). |
| Degree of inflexibility with workflow management because manual actions are required by managers to reallocate work if staff are absent or reassigned to specialist tasks. Management monitoring of staff progress with debt recovery inhibited by the use of the mix of paper-based and workbook caseload systems. |
Managers will have access in the new system to specialist screens for monitoring the work done by all staff reporting to them. They will be able to select different staff members and view their workload and progress. Performance reporting screens will enable monitoring of debt recovery performance by team, site, or the whole Collections Unit. Managers will be able to block/reallocate caseload or task assignments to individual staff members if they are absent/specialising in particular tasks. Tasks will be able to be redirected to different debt management officers based on required skills, experience, or specialisation of tasks. |