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Exploring the Power of Automation with the Legal Ombudsman
The Legal Ombudsman (LeO) was formed in October 2010 as a result of the Legal Services Act 2007 and is appointed by the Office for Legal Complaints to run an independent scheme that resolves complaints about lawyers in a fair and effective way, helping to drive improvements to legal services.
LeO is a high-profile public body, dealing with over 100,000 contacts per year. The Legal Ombudsman engaged Version 1’s Innovation Labs to explore how automation technology can deliver real differences across their organisation.
Client Profile
Legal Ombudsman
Established:
2010
Client Since:
2016
Employees:
260
Industry:
Public Sector
The Customer's Challenge
The current process for registering complaints to the Legal Ombudsman starts from the organisation’s website where consumers access the Customer Assessment Tool (CAT) and fill out the required information. Validation is applied across the data, with the overall process stopping if the complaint does not meet the required criteria.
If the complaint is successful, a summary email is generated and sent to a shared mailbox which is monitored by the Legal Ombudsman’s employees. Upon receipt of a new email, this will create a new case on the company’s CRM system and manually fill all the required information. As is commonplace with any manual data entry, this is a slow and repetitive process which is prone to human error.
Automating the Manual
With the case entry process being tedious and time-consuming for its employees, LeO engaged Version 1’s Innovation Labs to explore how RPA (Robotic Process Automation) could help in overcoming this challenge.
The time to process each case is around 10-15 minutes, which reduces the productivity of caseworkers. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) was identified as the perfect solution by Version 1 to automate this process.
RPA is our first digital innovation, and it will process forms at a speed and capacity that will allow human resources to focus on the complaint itself. This offers us new opportunities to explore other methods and models of working. From a customer perspective, the case will be created instantly and they will be notified of this. This offers a faster and improved service at the point of entry, and also allows us to manage all complaints waiting for further assessment in our Case Management System.
- Richard Cooper, Operations Transformation Manager, Legal Ombudsman
Discovering the Power of Automation in an Agile Manner
After analysing initial requirements, Version 1 planned to implement an RPA solution that would automatically handle complaint forms, input them into CRM, and perform an in-jurisdiction check. As a leading Microsoft partner, Version 1 utilised Logic Apps due to its functional connectivity to Outlook and CRM Dynamics in the Legal Ombudsman’s internal systems.
The PoV was implemented in 4 bi-weekly sprints, fully automating the assessment phase of the Case registration process along with the in-jurisdiction check. The solution is planned to be in production by the end of Q1 2021.
The Innovation Labs are currently engaging with LeO for another PoV employing Smart Text, our Natural Language Processing (NLP) solution, to summarise the documents attached to a case. This solution will empower LeO’s employees, delivering the most important insights from the document rapidly.
We started looking for solutions at the beginning of our process, and are now working together to explore other technologies, and processes that would benefit from innovation. Our ongoing work in Natural Language Processing is as promising is as it is exciting, and provides a flexible technology that can be deployed across the organisation, as well as providing valuable data capture.
- Richard Cooper, Operations Transformation Manager, Legal Ombudsman
Real Differences, Delivered
The following benefits were achieved for the Legal Ombudsman by the Version 1 Innovation Labs:
| • Version 1 automated the case creation process with all the necessary validations. • A unique, consistent way to register new cases in LeO’s CRM was developed. • Version 1 automated the In-jurisdiction check based on the complaint data. • The case creation process time frame was significantly reduced – from a complaint being received to case creation, now taking 45 seconds from 15 minutes. • There is now better resource utilisation capability for LeO, with 260 man-days saved per year due to the introduction of RPA. • As some of these benefits are measurable, this solution gave LeO confidence to explore new technologies like Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing that could be incorporated along with existing/new RPA to create Hyper/Smart Automation. • The longer-term benefit is that LeO, as a business, has started how and in which business process to apply new technologies for empowering their employees and provide better service to its customers. |
I’m excited by the potential that this technology can provide and the positive impact it will have on customer service and satisfaction. I’m extremely grateful to the professionalism, dedication, and passion of Version 1’s Innovation Labs, and look forward to achieving great outcomes together!
- Richard Cooper, Operations Transformation Manager at the Legal Ombudsman
