Summary:
- Bobby and her team simplified the management of certificate stock across her 3 locations
Reading’s Challenge:
When Bobby Bailey joined the Reading team from nearby Swindon, she brought with her a wealth of experience managing registration services and an understanding of how to optimise different service areas for the biggest efficiency gains.
Alongside climatising to her new team, surroundings and diary set up, managing the service’s certificate inventory was proving to be a challenge.
Where certificates had previously all been present in one place in her previous role, Reading had 3 locations in which certificate stock was available and different stock was present at different locations (e.g. SR stock).
Some locations also required the same types of certificates as others, meaning packs would be passed to other offices, ultimately making it tricky to keep tabs on where things were and how much stock was left.
The team’s existing spreadsheet was also unable to keep up with pack movements, resulting in data that wasn’t always reliable and required time to tidy up later.
Enter Certificate Stock:
As an add-on module to their existing online booking and diary management system, Agenda for Registrars, Certificate Stock was introduced in late 2021 as a way of bringing Agenda closer to being an all-in-one service management tool for registrars.
This brought with it functionality to:
- Manage users who would own packs, their deputies and who could issue from where.
- Allow registrars to issue against appointments, ceremonies and copy certificate orders directly.
- Maintain an electronic counterfoil with a display of certificates issued, stock that was spoiled etc.
- Conduct initial and end of day stock checks to keep on top of inventory levels
The Results:
Upon getting set up with Certificate Stock, Reading’s registrars quickly got to work making the most of the new functionality.
From an interview with Bobby, the following were some of the key benefits she felt were achieved through making the switch to Certificate Stock:
- There was a new found transparency around certificates. Who could issue, what packs were available, what pack was open, what certificate type was issued etc. all helped provide Bobby with greater confidence that her data was accurate.
- Reporting tools offered an overview of the locations in real-time, offering her up-to-date insights on inventory levels.
- The insights within Certificate Stock were detailed enough that if the GRO had conducted an audit, the data would be clear and concise.
- Functionality like ‘end of day stock check’ and its predictive pack count meant that a lot of the certificate management process was built into the one system, removing the need to manage a spreadsheet separately.
- If certificates got lost in the post, you could review the counterfoil, the number of certificates spoiled and more in a few clicks.
We’d like to thank Reading’s Superintendent Registrar Bobby Bailey for sharing her experience using Certificate Stock for this case study.