North Tyneside Council is the local authority for North Tyneside in Tyne and Wear, England. The council commissions services to North Tyneside residents that promote resilience, independence, progression, and recovery regarding daily living and life skills, education, employment, health, care, and well-being.
North Tyneside Council is a technologically forward-thinking organisation that is always striving to stay ahead by integrating new technologies to benefit both council staff and the wider community.
The Challenge
North Tyneside Council used ageing document management systems across the council that contained crucial data. The systems were becoming unsupported, meaning they would no longer be updated or were nearing the end of life. This situation posed the risk of losing data and potentially causing non-compliance with GDPR.
With the risk of housing older solutions, the Council was proactive in looking for a more efficient system that would, in the initial phase, allow the HR team to be more strategic and allow people to self-serve when needing to access information.
The Solution
Knowing the importance of GDPR and compliance, North Tyneside Council took the initiative, invested in their technologies before the old systems became a problem, and collaborated with TSG to implement TSG Mosaic.
TSG Mosaic is an Electronic Document and Record Management System (EDRM) built on the M365 platform that leverages SharePoint’s power. Mosaic is designed to improve collaboration, automate workflows, and ensure compliance with regulatory requirements.
Since its implementation, Mosaic has helped automate processes for storing information, which has improved efficiency long-term. By focusing attention on retention periods, the new system has also significantly reduced the risk of non-compliance with GDPR.
TSG’s consultants delivered the implementation with patience and understanding, particularly in translating the council's needs into the system's functionalities, adapting the solution as their understanding matured.
Over 90 HR department employees use TSG Mosaic, and around 20 people use it daily for personal filing. There have been almost 7000 files uploaded so far to TSG Mosaic; it currently hosts over 5600 employee folders.
The Results
Since the implementation of TSG Mosaic, North Tyneside Council has seen multiple benefits, including:
Document Retention: TSG Mosaic helped in retaining documents only for the required period and in the correct places, which was not always possible with documents stored in several locations.
Ease of Use and Support: The system’s ease of use and the support provided by TSG during testing and troubleshooting, helped overcome initial glitches and simplified document storage and retrieval.
GDPR Compliance and Risk Reduction: The project significantly reduced the risk of non-compliance with GDPR by focusing on retention periods and ensuring data is stored in a compliant manner, which was a major benefit from an HR perspective.
Simplified Document Management: Mosaic simplifies the complexities of document classification, uploading, and searching, making it easier to manage documents efficiently. Teams across HR can now easily access and locate files and data as and when they need it.
Scalability and Integration: Mosaic is configurable and scalable, allowing it to integrate with other systems and adapt to the business’s needs. This has encouraged the team to build the case to use Mosaic in other business areas.
What’s Next?
The implementation of TSG Mosaic in North Tyneside Council’s HR department was used as a proof of concept, and there are now plans to expand its use to other service areas, such as housing and property services. This second phase will expand access to approximately 3000 people, including around 400 managers.
Working with TSG on the implementation of Mosaic has been a very positive experience for our HR department. The People Team were at the heart of the design, ensuring the solution met their specific needs and expectations. The end product is incredibly user-friendly and includes all the essential functionality we needed to store our data in a compliant manner. The technical team did a great job of translating our requirements into a robust digital solution that benefits the entire organisation, including the People Team, managers, and colleagues. Their expertise has made a significant positive impact on our operations.
Helen McMahon, Project Manager/Digital Change Lead
Navigating the complexities of our organisation required a straightforward solution that could be easily adopted by all departments. We were attracted to Mosaic because it layers over our existing SharePoint platform, we could get it up and running without delay, and its filing and tagging capabilities gave us the feel of a custom product without the need for one.
Daniel Simms, CTO
TSG’s reliability and trustworthiness were the very reasons I turned to them. The competence of TSG's consultants is beyond question. Their straightforward, transparent approach, coupled with their responsiveness, has instilled a sense of security and comfort in my staff.
Daniel Simms, CTO
