Coventry City Council – Delivering a modern approach to public sector portfolio maintenance

Like many public sector organisations, Coventry City Council is responsible for delivering a web of complex and fragmented solutions. These include services to schools, private homes, council offices and external clients.

Prior to engaging with MRI, managing the abundance of maintenance required for Coventry’s corporate estate was becoming increasingly messy and unmanageable.

Kirsty Cowie, Commercial Manager at Coventry City Council, was enlisted to bring modernised IT systems to the council and to commercialise the organisation in a sustainable way that allowed for future growth.

The council already had identified prospective providers and Kirsty, along with her own recommendations, worked to identify best of breed CAFM solutions that could deliver their intricate requirements.

Kirsty was already familiar with MRI’s Evolution facilities management software from her previous employment and knew that its user-friendliness, flexibility and adaptability would work well for the nuances of the council. She took all CAFM providers through the tender process, asking them to demonstrate how their key objectives could be achieved.

The facilities team was also invited to join the demo and Q&A sessions, allowing them to see the capabilities of the systems first-hand and ask any burning questions.

A scoring system was put in place, and as a result of this MRI was selected as the new provider. Other providers were found too vague in their proposal, whereas MRI was able to go into great detail about the capabilities of the system, confidently assuring those at Coventry City Council that MRI Evolution could meet and exceed their expectations.

Simplifying complex needs

One of the key challenges facing Coventry City Council was their varied and siloed portfolio.

Before MRI Evolution was introduced, the council was using several systems. The helpdesk, planners and compliance teams were using integrations to try and feed information into one another. There was no central way to manage contracts and delivery of tasks or have oversight on the current workload and how this is being managed.

While centralising the organisation’s entire management of portfolio maintenance was the primary goal, many other efficiencies have been accomplished as a result of implementing MRI Evolution.

Billing made easy

As Coventry City Council bills departments internally as well as customers, they don’t have a typical invoicing setup that is common in a private organisation. This means that MRI Evolution system would need to allow them the flexibility to have detailed invoicing rules, as well as handle the different cost centres and codes.

MRI Evolution also needed to integrate seamlessly into Coventry’s integral Business World ERP system and both requirements were successfully met.

Digitising Compliance

One of the most game-changing benefits for Coventry City Council was the integration of compliance certificates. Traditionally, engineers were completing written forms on-site or producing time-consuming excel sheets.

With MRI Evolution, all compliance documentation is directly linked to a job, with all the asset details included within the software. This eliminates the need for time-consuming historical processes, where teams would have had to pull information from multiple digital and printed sources to piece together an understanding of what’s been delivered.

What the future looks like with MRI Evolution in the picture

Kirsty says, “We introduced the system to people that had been at the council 30 to 40 years. We expected hesitance, but there wasn’t any. After just a day’s training those who had worked with legacy systems were able to pick up MRI Evolution easily. The system has grown gradually with us. The teams are used to it and using it well. Now we are thinking about expanding how to utilise it and where we can go next”.

As well as transforming the day-to-day lives of the helpdesk, engineers, end-users and facilities teams, the organisation as a whole is benefitting from incredible savings. As Kirsty’s colleagues have been embracing the change and been so keen to deliver services in a more effective way, her vision has truly come to life.

“MRI Evolution has opened new commercial doors for us. What we’re now delivering is a fully professional experience. We are seeing greater resource efficiencies, distributing more work than ever. We are saving £30,000 a year in axed software alone.”

“We are also communicating more with customers. Better handling jobs for engineers. We have total visibility. We haven’t even begun to think about all the energy savings we are making along the way. There is a wealth of resources now available at our fingertips and MRI Evolution will help us make them a commodity”.

Learn more about MRI Evolution.