Case Study
The Case for Agility:
How one of the UK’s largest councils implemented Flexi-Grant® in record time.
The Council offers a programme of grants to support rural funding, local community projects/clubs and adaptations to houses to support those with disabilities.
In this success story, we share how one of the UK’s leading Council’s partnered with Flexi-Grant® to ensure their national reputation for being a top performing local authority in the country was maintained. The council are one of the largest local authorities who provide rural funding, youth grants and disability support to those within the county through a series of grants.
The Challenge
In 2018, the Council were tasked with finding a new grant management system, almost immediately. Their previous grants management system was due to be turned off and they turned to Flexi-Grant® to transition seamlessly to a new grant management system to have as little disruption as possible for their applicants. Flexi-Grant® is on the G-Cloud framework so the council’s grants team were able to procure it in record time through the trusted government framework.
The deciding factor was the ability to adapt our forms ourselves
The deciding factor on choosing Flexi-Grant® was the ability to adapt the application forms ourselves, which is important as we have over 42 grant programmes. Being able to make edits to the system and application forms to suit our needs was a top priority.
Funding Development Team Member, Leading UK Council
The Solution
The council were eager to get started and ensure all their grant management tasks were online within one system. The first step was having a ‘discovery’ phase which is a workshop Flexi-Grant® always put in place with new clients at the start of every project to ensure needs are met, documents are collected, and processes are mapped.
The Council also needed data migration services and required several years of data to be migrated from their old system to Flexi-Grant®. This transfer was carefully mapped, and the transfer happened overnight after the council’s team exported their old data into spreadsheets and went through the process of ‘data cleansing’ with the help of the Flexi-Grant® team. The data migration service was a success, and they are now able to report on both historical and current data to map trends and predict key periods of high volumes and support queries.
The Flexi-Grant® team spent two days training the Council’s staff on how to move applications through the system, how to run reports and how to set up monitoring and payments. The goal was to ensure the Council’s grants team felt confident in adding applications and programmes on their own and in the end the entire team were able to fully own and edit their system.
“After the Flexi-Grant® training we were sent user guides which covered all the steps we had been taught and we were also assigned a project coordinator from their team, so we had someone on hand in case we had a questions or queries. This support was invaluable during those early days of learning how to navigate the system and get the most out of its functions.”
Funding Development Team Member | Leading UK Council
The council were also able to use Flexi-Grant’s extensive Knowledge Base which contains helpful articles, FAQ’s and ‘how to’ documents. This portal enabled the Council to self-service any queries and use the articles to teach new members of staff needing casual access to the system.
“The Flexi-Grant® team have a reputation for an efficient and friendly support team and in reality, they didn’t disappoint; any tickets raised were dealt with quickly and with a real eye for detail. Their team always ensured we felt empowered to manage the system ourselves and would regularly send ‘how to’ videos to walk us through the problem.”
Funding Development Team Member | Leading UK Council
The Summary
Partnering with Flexi-Grant® has enabled the Council to process and manage grants much easier and efficiently. Programme managers feel empowered and capable of easily logging on, processing & scoring applications and generating offer letters & monitoring reports. Even panel members who for years have scored applications using pen and paper, have reported what a difference it has made using the system to score and have all the relevant documents in one place. The Council credit Flexi-Grant® as being a central and reliable place to handle their sometimes laborious and complex programmes.
Invaluable support right from the procurement process
The team at Fluent have provided invaluable support at every step of the process which made procuring, setting up and rolling out Flexi-Grant® seamless.
Funding Development Team Member, Leading UK Council
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