Chandigarh Estate office caters to the construction and development of civil infrastructure of Chandigarh. Among the biggest property management agencies in India, its functions include selling plots through allotment or auction; collecting rent for government-built tenements and maintaining records for ownership and lease of property.
The Challenge
• Long retrieval time for the desired information: Earlier, the Estate office was manually maintaining all the records in papers and files and updating them was time consuming.
• Information Integrity: There were concerns regarding files pages getting torn or misfiled.
• Low Productivity: Long time was spent on searching and the subsequent work couldn’t proceed.
• Lack of Transparency: There was no readily available (online) status of property.
Towards this end, in the year 2001, the Estate office engaged Price Waterhouse Coopers (PWC) as consultants for studying its processes and submitting a report suggesting measures for improvement. The report suggested outsourcing of payment collection and computerization of Estate office. Consequently, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed by the Estate office with a leading bank to entirely computerize the Estate office, appropriate software and training to the Estate office personnel.
The Newgen Solution
After evaluating several other vendors, Newgen was tasked with responsibility of software development and training part of computerization process. The Newgen solution provides automation of both back office and front office processes.
Newgen Business Process Management (BPM) solution, OmniFlow, consisting of a rule-based engine automated processes related to issuing of no objection certificates, payment of dues, generation of receipts, notice generation, redressing citizen grievance, records maintenance and accounting system, and provided for an efficient controlling and monitoring of records.
Estate office documents are converted into images to have an instant access of property details i.e. ownership details, mortgage, violations, payment paid, transactions etc.
For customer grievances applications, a unique id is generated and the applications are directly forwarded to concerned officials. The unique id is used to continuously monitor the application status and quick redressing grievances are ensured.
Elaborate and easy-to-understand documentation was provided for end users to quickly adapt to automated processes. A team was set up in parallel, for imparting training of developed functionality.
The property details were hosted on the Website of the Estate Office, thus resulting in more transparency and less fraud. The system was highly appreciated by the Lt. Governor of the concerned Union Territory.
The Benefits
The solution provided by Newgen helped the client improve productivity, increase cost savings, reduce processing time. The benefits for the client include:
• Shortened turnaround time for Application Processing: The process turnaround time has been reduced from an earlier period of 35 days to between 13 and 20 days.
• Virtual Elimination of Threat of Losing Integrity of Record: As all the records have been digitized, there is no chance of records getting destroyed due to wear and tear.
• Immediate Availability / Customer Delight: Whenever a request comes, records can be made available in a short amount time thus helping in better co-ordination between departments and customer delight.
• Reduced staff workload: Customers can directly check information online.
• Early Detection of missing documents: The issue of short submission of documents was a major bottleneck in the older system. As part of the automated solution, the officer accepting the application runs it through a system controlled checklist for ensuring all the necessary documents are attached with the application.
• Improved Productivity: There is no time lost in physically searching for information.
• Improved Accountability: Estate Officer (EO) and senior officers have the data highlighting the average time to process an application and detailed audit trail to track and identify existing bottlenecks for quick and informed decisions.
• Increased Transparency and Reduced Fraud: Clear demarcation of responsibilities with extensive monitoring mechanisms means that chance of fraud is reduced.