Over the past week I’ve written about four of the five things that a Community Rehabilitation Company (CRC) needs to do well. This last post on the subject brings alive the fifth area where a CRC needs to excel.

The final piece of the puzzle is all about developing the business and ensuring the organisation continues to grow, in what will be a faster moving world with high expectations from parent investors.  To ensure the right returns for society and their shareholders, those new parents will invest far more than probation has had before under public sector constraints.

In the new world its going to be more competitive, more technologically enabled and more collaborative too.  Continuing to develop and grow the organisation will be essential for that competitiveness and to hold on to talented staff, as well as attract in new hires.

So what are some of the well known areas that a CRC needs to get right as regards organisation change and business development?

1. Multi-trust CRC integration and organisation change, as well as  multi CRC co-ordination for those where a new parent wins more than one CRC
2. Group, team, department and organisation wide collaboration
3. Business planning, risk management and demonstration of delivery

Numerous boards and trusts used pam to merge and change their organisations, and almost all of our customers used the platform to bring their business plans to life, making them more actionable and accountable. Its likely that most CRC’s will stick with the tried and tested PC02 2007 approach to risk management, although enhance it with the requirements for information risk management within ISO 27001: 2013.  Collaboration, like information security and the probation approach to risk management, is baked into pam.

We have already heard many positive stories about how pam is enabling multi-trust CRC’s to work better together.  John Wiseman is CEO of Bristol, Gloucester, Somerset and Wiltshire CRC.  John’s team are rolling out pam across the three former trusts with lots of early successes, making collaboration much easier and saving considerable time (and money) in what is now a sizeable geography.  With 3 versions of everything including local shared drives, pam being in the cloud has just sliced through that coordination problem.  It allows the teams to concentrate on getting the job done, rather than worry about how to share and work together.  With its repeatable frameworks and elegant change capability, pam also shines a light on how the integration is going.  It offers senior management a fast way to celebrate success and course correct when required.

Other areas that CRC’s need to deliver well in future include the following business growth areas:

1. Customer and commissioner management
2. Partner management (Statutory & Non Statutory)
3. Agile marketing and coordinated communications
4. Business development, commissioning and tender mgt

Those CRC’s that adopt pam, especially for their ISO 27001 solution, can get an environment that enables efficient and effective delivery for the points above. Customers and commissioners like the Ministry of Justice and Police & Crime Commissioner will need to be managed carefully in future.  Its not just about the contract, its the relationship as well – and some of these commissioners will need tight management to ensure they deliver on their promises to the CRC’s.  pam already solves the contract and relationship management conundrum for suppliers and partners in probation as we developed a solution for many of the Trusts, who have now taken it into their CRC.  In Alliantist we also use pam for our customer management and have now made that part of the platform available for CRC use too.

When I first got involved with probation back in 2006/7, I recognised it had a marketing problem.  Despite much great work being delivered, the press and other commentators were only interested in the bad news.  Many trusts improved their approach to marketing in the past 5-8 years, both organisationally and in particular with leaders becoming better known through twitter.   It’s still an area for improvement though and must become much stronger in the new world.  In Alliantist we have our own agile marketing communications plan, built from a pam project which evolves as our environment evolves.   It has given us the ability to optimise our limited resources and deliver a more joined up, relevant story at low cost. We are already seeing the benefits and have now also made that framework available to CRC’s.

Finally, we took a look at those areas where resources are being drawn in to deliver important work for the CRC, but doing so in an inefficient fashion.

No business can grow effectively if it has these sort of areas being delivered in an old paper/spreadsheet/email based manner:

1. Equality and diversity planning & delivery
2. Other policies/general office controls (see my post on ISO 27001)
3. Correspondence and Freedom of Information
4. Other quality standards e.g. EFQM, IIP
5. Ideas and suggestions management
6. Accident/HSE coordination and management

Using a combination of old favourite pam features coupled with our new Tracks initiatives, pam can help make a difference to these areas quickly. Recent feedback from one of our PCC pioneers also reinforces that we are on the right path by making life much easier for staff around areas like correspondence management.  These final areas are not that exciting or likely to make the organisation grow per se, but if they are not done well it will definitely prevent growth.

So in summary, the five areas that a CRC needs to do well beyond core offender management are now clear:

1. CRC led initiatives involving partners
2. Partner led initiatives affecting probation outcomes
3. Ecosystem strategic collaboration
4. Mandatory customer contract obligations
5. Organisation development and growth

Having worked closely with probation professionals in recent years, and by running a small business of our own in a lean fashion, we have built and delivered a platform to get all this work done well.  It is already in use by 50% of the CRC’s and will be of even greater value to its users with the community growing further.

Whether acting alone or collaborating with others, pam offers a unique space that means new owners can equip their staff and partners to work well together.  Its also at such a low cost, spread across a range of areas that would otherwise require 8-10 applications, the return on investment is compelling.  There is no other ‘one stop shop’ solution available to CRC’s that can deliver what it takes for probation to succeed.

We aim to continue being the platform of choice for criminal and social justice professionals, and look forward to the announcements about the new CRC owners in the very near future.

Contact us now if you would like to learn more about our work with probation or its partners.