Vale of Glamorgan sees huge benefits from using Symphony

Vale of Glamorgan Council have seen some real benefits from using Aligned Assets Symphony range of software.

The Council started to create their LLPG in 2001 but, due to resource limitations at that time, sharing data was difficult and the business case for continuing its development was difficult to justify. What was needed was a compelling business need for up-to-date, accurate and accessible address data. This came in the form of the council’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system.

The CRM itself was part of a huge council-wide project called OneVale, which needed an accurate and reliable address database at its core. A working LLPG was crucial to the council and would now prove vital across every department of the council. To do this, the maintenance of the database was brought back in house and a full-time LLPG / Local Street Gazetteer Custodian was employed.

Anthony Tarrant has over five years’ experience of working with gazetteers and has seen first-hand the development of how these datasets can be managed and implemented.

Anthony’s first task was to find a simple to use, Oracle based management system. A number of companies provide these specialist services and products to councils and, after researching all of these, the Vale decided to employ Aligned Assets Limited.

Anthony picked Aligned Assets’ Symphony iManage, not only because he believed it to be the best product for his application, but also because he found a large user community of the product in councils across the country.

Now Anthony was able to bring the LLPG up to the quality that Vale of Glamorgan Council required and easily maintain that quality.

Another program from the Symphony Suite; iExchange, meant that Anthony could output the LLPG data in a format that could be understood by the legacy systems that still remained within the council.

Vale of Glamorgan Council has seen the huge cost and service benefits that the implementation of an LLPG can bring across the whole council. Because of this the project is currently being extended to include the management of the council tax, non-domestic rates, the electoral register, planning applications and land charges. The real step forward that the Council has understood that with the correct implementation, the right people in place and the backing of the whole organisation, the LLPG can bring real financial and service benefits to every department.