Kingston Upon Hull City Council has launched the search for a supplier to undertake a huge overhaul of its online services.

The council, along with other public sector bodies in Yorkshire and Humberside, wants to transform the digital experience for users of its services.

It today launched a prior information for a contract covering seven areas which could be worth £10m over 10 years.

The council  said that it was seeking suppliers for the “provision of technology supplies and/or services to support the Hull City Council Customer Enablement Programme”.

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It said that it wanted to explore both on-premises and cloud delivery models before deciding the split between both solutions.

The contract will be divided into seven lots:

• Customer Relationship Management system. This will replace the council’s legacy CRM and is aimed at reducing manual processing to deliver efficiency savings, to “enable a more comprehensive single view of a customer for service staff, enabling more efficient customer service and delivering a more joined up customer experience”;
• Customer portal. This will allow customers to access services online in order to deliver efficiencies by reducing face-to-face contact and increasing automation;
• Integration between CRM and back office system. This includes children’s services, housing, council tax and benefits plus environmental health;
• Booking system. This will fill gaps not already met by other systems and will provide a single access point for bookings made by citizens;
• Customer data warehouse. This is aimed at creating efficiency savings by allowing the council and partners to better understand demand and predict future trends;
• Master Data Management solution. This will help the council better manage customer data, creating a single repository of information based around customers, rather than property addresses;
• Hardware devices. This will help facilitate mobile working for adults, children and highway services. Up to 300 devices will be required.

Other partners involved in the recruitment include Healthwatch, Hull and ER Hospitals NHS Trust, Humber NHS Foundation Trust, Humberside Fire and Rescue, Humberside Police, NHS Hull Clinical Commissioning Group, Yorkshire Ambulance Service and City Healthcare Partnership.

The time limit for the receipt of expressions of interest is 31 March 2016.

In September, the council announced its intention to move its web infrastructure onto Drupal, hosted on virtual servers.

It hopes to improve its customer services in time for 2017, when Hull will be UK City of Culture.