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New York City Launches Enhanced 311 Service for Public School Families with Accenture’s Support


WEBWIRE

NEW YORK – New York City’s Department of Education (DOE) worked with Accenture (NYSE: ACN) to design and launch in September 2009 a new call center to better serve families.

The NYC DOE teamed with Accenture to design and implement the new enhanced 311 system to consolidate select disparate processes into a single application for handling inquires about enrollment, transportation and other topics related to a student’s school experience. New York City encompasses the largest public school system in the United States, delivering education to approximately 1.1 million students in 1,500 schools and employing more than 80,000 teachers. Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein set a vision for the new call center for families modeled after the City’s highly successful 311 call center and website, which provide government information and non-emergency service.

The enhanced 311 system to benefit public school families was piloted at the start of summer, using Oracle CRM On Demand, a software as a service (SaaS) customer relationship management solution that cost less than a customized approach and integrated effectively with the DOE’s existing environment. Additional development and data integration took place throughout the summer allowing NYC DOE to launch the solution and call center in time for start of school.

The new system integrates information from select NYC DOE offices, including the Offices of Student Enrollment, Pupil Transportation, Family Engagement and Advocacy, and Special Education Initiatives. It eliminates the need for parents to call different departments, significantly improving the time to resolve inquires on issues such as student enrollment, school transportation and a variety of other services. It provides NYC DOE managers with visibility into service performance and the ability to identify trends and make recommendations for service improvements based on empirical data. The unified call center “hotline” approach also frees departmental specialists to focus on more complex inquiries, improving student services and the DOE’s ability to implement policy changes.

“Working with Accenture we were able to ramp up quickly, creating necessary work flows and loading relevant data, and perform functional and user testing in time for the opening of school. Most importantly, our callers, parents, guardians, and staff supporting our families are very satisfied with the new service,” said Rob Sanft, DOE’s Project Manager.

“Accenture’s role is to help organizations such at NYC DOE get the best results from their technology tools. This enhanced 311 system for parents and guardians with children in public schools will continue to evolve and support NYC DOE many years into the future,” said Steve Hurst, Accenture’s Health & Public Service practice lead for New York City.

About Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. Combining unparalleled experience, comprehensive capabilities across all industries and business functions, and extensive research on the world’s most successful companies, Accenture collaborates with clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. With approximately 177,000 people serving clients in more than 120 countries, the company generated net revenues of US$21.58 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2009. Its home page is www.accenture.com.



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