Case study
Why the UK Home Office uses CACI as their key partner for delivering systems that underpin the UK’s border strategy
Summary
Over 76 million passengers a year make over 130 million crossings through the mission-critical applications that CACI have delivered. Our solutions have improved both the security and efficiency of the border at over 270 ports of entry (so helping to keep more bad people out while ensuring that legitimate travellers have a safe, fast experience) and made a demonstrable difference to the availability and resilience of the UK border systems.
Company size
50,000+
Industry
Government
Products used
Challenge
Identifying a solution capable of automated entry decision-making at e-gates.
Ensuring successful business transformation
amidst decommissioning legacy systems
Solution
To enable this, CACI:
- Scaled up to 80 highly skilled resources across nine multi-disciplinary teams (initial ramp-up to 60 within six months).
- Built a rules-based decision engine for border
entry. - Integrated novel critical services to mitigate threats
to UK security.
- Implemented upgrades for accessibility, zero
downtime deployment, high availability and robust
resilience. - Aligned CACI project delivery with Home Office
programme governance. - Participated in a joint leadership governance
structure, working alongside client-side teams,
to make joint priority calls and ensure that no
protectionist silos built up.
Results
Citizen-facing benefits included:
- Enabling >130m border crossings per year.
- Enhanced UK protection by digitally transforming
border security procedures. - Facilitated more expedient travel across the border
through electronic integration of the previously
manual passenger locator form information during
the COVID-19 pandemic
Additional results included:
- First live release delivered on time and under
- budget, with positive feedback from the client community and significantly higher availability and reliability than the previous pilot release.
- Rapid delivery (from concept to delivery in eight
weeks) of the Passenger Locator Form (PLF)
integration. - PLF integration was an urgent operational
requirement, which made an immediate
impact on the UK borders, easing congestion
and improving the security of health measures
at the border. - Introduced enhanced passport authentication,
which, according to one customer expert,
delivered “the single most important thing we can
do to improve security at the UK border”. - Maintained an average cadence of over two
releases per month, supporting continuously
evolving customer requirements
Case study
How CACI’s bespoke Digital Services Register enhances the deployment of RAF Digital’s solutions
Summary
RAF Digital is a key component of the RAF, driving digital transformation and innovation. As the RAF becomes more data-centric, there is an increasing demand for mapping information flows, understanding the technology used to consume this data and managing associated costs.
The RAF Digital Architecture Function (AF) provides assurance and actionable guidance to programmes and projects from an Information Defence Line of Development perspective. As it continues to evolve in support of Air’s digital transformation, there is a growing need to enhance governance, collaboration and consistency across programmes while operating within a broad and complex stakeholder landscape. Documenting artefacts and fostering a culture of reuse that reduces time, risk and cost are crucial as the AF matures, which led to the development of the Digital Services Register: a comprehensive repository of architectural patterns, services and standards for reference.
Company size
30,000+
Industry
Defence
Products used
Challenge
Historically, architectural artefacts were often developed in isolation, resulting in duplicated efforts and inconsistencies. This prompted the AF to adopt a more structured approach to knowledge management and improve continuity, decision-making and the reusability of architectural artefacts.
As the function matures, its ways of working will naturally evolve to meet new demands and challenges. During this transition, external expertise will be vital in shaping best practices, refining methodologies and contributing to the development of architectural artefacts. Collaborating with industry partners will also help ensure that the AF remains agile, effective and well-positioned to support Air’s long-term digital strategy.
Solution
To address the challenges faced by the RAF Digital Architecture Function (AF), the Digital Services Register was created to ensure the RAF would maintain consistency and efficiency in developing and deploying their digital solutions. Supplementary SME knowledge was also provided on the scoping and costing of new services, including offering guidance on best practices, identifying risks and aligning new projects with the RAF’s digital strategy to further support this.
Experienced solution architects with a solid background in the Air Domain were also employed, working closely with desk officers and collaborating with other industry partners to refine the definition of Information Defence Line of Development (DLoD) services. A key focus was determining how these services, along with architectural patterns and standards, could be effectively documented within the Digital Services Register.
Throughout this process, the solution architects utilised a range of industry-standard tools to develop and manage architectural artefacts. However, after careful evaluation of various solutions, Mood’s no-code software was identified as the most suitable platform for the development of the Digital Services Register. This decision was driven by Mood’s ability to provide an intuitive and user-friendly interface while maintaining the rigour of formal architectural modelling.
Although the Digital Services Register adhered to the ArchiMate notation, its accessible design allowed end users to create ArchiMate-compliant artefacts without requiring prior knowledge of the notation. Additionally, through the use of a Model Exchange File, data could be seamlessly imported or exported into other tools.
Results
The Digital Services Register documents over 60 services and nearly 80 standards, creating a comprehensive knowledge repository. Supported by a robust governance model, it allows different permission groupings to perform specific functions within the tool. Administrator privileges have been granted to desk officers within the Architecture Function, enabling them to manage and maintain the tool independently without relying on support from CACI.
Initially rolled out to architects, the tool has since been expanded to include desk officers and programme stakeholders. The Digital Services Register is accessible via MODNet laptops, with login facilitated through seamless single sign-on technology. This means that users can collaborate cross-boundary, fostering an interactive and engaged user community.
Each service in the register is accompanied by metadata, including completeness and confidence scores, as well as point-of-contact details, equipping users with insight into the reliability and thoroughness of the information. Additionally, the tool features graphical representations that illustrate the relationships between services, highlight their specialisations and demonstrate how they connect to relevant standards. These visual aids further enhance the tool’s usefulness for users across the RAF.
Now that the tool has been handed over to the desk officers, it has entered a phase of continuous improvement. To ensure the information remains accurate and relevant, monthly workshops are being organised by the desk officers. These workshops will focus on updating and refining the content, fostering ongoing collaboration and ensuring the tool evolves with the development of new services and standards.
Case study
How CACI helps the Central Statistics Office (CSO) deliver national-scale data systems
Summary
Since 2001, CACI has been a trusted partner of the Central Statistics Office (CSO), Ireland’s national statistical agency. We’ve successfully delivered the Census Processing System (CPS) for five consecutive Irish censuses: 2002, 2006, 2011, 2016, 2022, and are currently contracted for Census 2027, Ireland’s first online census.
CACI plays a vital role in enabling the CSO to design, manage and process millions of census returns through innovative form design, advanced data capture and secure IT infrastructure. Our work ensures that every response, paper or online, is processed accurately and efficiently, delivering trusted data that powers national decision-making.
Company size
1,000+
Industry
National Statistics & Public Data
Products used
Census Processing System (CPS)
Challenge
The Irish census is a major national operation, requiring four years of planning, a six-month processing window and publication of initial results within a year. In 2022, the CSO expanded its workforce by approximately 5,500 temporary staff to support the distribution and collection of over two million census forms across Ireland.
High-quality form design and printing were essential, not only for public confidence, but for accurate and efficient data capture. Once collected, the data was processed using CACI’s Census Processing System, which handled over 48 million completed page images with speed, precision and confidentiality.
Solution
CACI delivered a structured, end-to-end solution through five integrated workstreams: Print, Infrastructure, Data Capture & Coding, Training, and Support & Maintenance, each with clear deliverables, milestones and governance.
Key elements included:
- Infrastructure & system delivery: Designed, installed and tested scanning and server infrastructure for CSO, alongside a robust processing system tailored to the 2022 census requirements.
- Rigorous testing & support: Extensive system testing and onsite support throughout live census processing operations (Jan 2022–Mar 2023).
- Data readiness & training: Database preparation and tailored training for CSO staff.
- Print & data capture services: Managed typesetting, printing and delivery of over 2 million high-quality census forms.
- Comprehensive system capabilities: Delivered a full suite of tools covering all stages of the census workflow:
- Warehouse & document handling: Form registration, box management, re-scribe processing, scanning, image correction and intelligent character recognition (ICR).
- Automated & operator-driven coding: Modules for Dwelling, Person, Communal Establishment, Family Nucleus, Industry & Occupation, Statistician-led data repair, Derived Variables and Statistical post-processing with automated clean-up rules.
Results
All contractual milestones and service levels were met or exceeded. The CSO confirmed the successful delivery of high-quality data outputs, supporting timely and accurate publications.
Looking ahead to Census 2027, CACI aims to continue delivering excellence, supporting the CSO with reliable systems, trusted data and domain expertise that inform government decisions and public spending.
Case study
How personalisation enabled easyJet to reduce the cost of disruption & increase retention & revenue
Summary
In the airline industry, where customer experiences can be impacted by factors outside of the airline’s control, communication is crucial to maintain satisfaction and loyalty, especially during operational disruptions. In fact, the impact of disruption to annual global air passengers will increase to 7.3 billion by 2034, more than double the 3.5 billion passengers that will travel this year.
Disruption management is therefore becoming increasingly important, demanding greater investment in the cost-to-serve and improved collaboration to enhance the industry’s ability to respond effectively. The topic must be considered with the commercial realities of improving sales and seasonal offers through marketing, however, which was a key component of CACI’s project with easyJet.
The business case centred on reducing the cost of disruption, improving retention and increasing revenue through personalisation. With disruption estimated to cost airlines up to 8% of annual revenue due to refund requests, brand damage and customer churn, investing in a unified customer communications platform would help easyJet dramatically reduce these losses.
Company size
17,000+
Industry
Travel
Challenge
Operating in an extraordinarily complex and competitive category, easyJet was experiencing a significant reduction in customer satisfaction and was losing customers and shares to competitors. EasyJet’s own analysis showed CAST (Customer Satisfaction Score) scores declining significantly within only minutes of a disruption event, and the first hour is key to securing satisfaction.
While the airline understood that reversing this trend and mitigating losses would only be possible by overhauling their customer communications, they needed help prioritising and executing this transformation. The most significant challenges were improving the consistency of information between customer communication channels, targeting communication more effectively and quickly, improving accuracy through automation and enhancing their MarTech stack and data strategy.
Solution
EasyJet endeavoured to address critical gaps in the consistency, personalisation and timeliness of customer communications across all stages of the travel journey, along with the following KPIs:
- CAST score increasing to 13% over the next three years
- Reducing the amount of refund requests through better communications (50% of easyJet claims for refunds being rejected).
- Improving communications as 37% passengers are reportedly unhappy during disruption events.
At the heart of this initiative was a holistic service design methodology that fused MarTech, a data strategy and operational transformation into one cohesive solution. To make such changes, CACI helped develop and implement easyJet’s customer-facing strategy, with three primary goals:
- MarTech implementation:Identify, assess and implement the MarTech solution to enable customer-centric communications including marketing, service and disruption.
- Customer-led campaign optimisation: Improving marketing campaign targeting and messaging, reducing email volume and ensuring sales and disruption messages do not overlap.
- Disruption management: Developing a strategy to improve and unify communication around flight disruptions across multiple channels (from email to airports).
Alongside this, CACI had to consider the operational service and business plan to ensure that processes, back-office systems and staff could deliver the new ‘to-be’ strategy while considering stakeholders’ vision and real user data based on interviews and surveys.
CACI’s approach was to run the following series of connected workstreams:
- MarTech & customer strategy audit: Unpack challenges and limitations across the existing landscape, identifying areas of improvement and streamlining across data and tech, customer comms strategy and operating model, during which 17 workshops with easyJet stakeholders took place.
- Customer data foundations strategy: Defining the aspirational architecture to resolve data challenges and enhance data processing, management and communications.
- Customer marketing contact strategy: By delving into a range of behavioural, attitudinal and demographic data that had rarely been used for customer insight and targeting, CACI could identify and quantify the value of multiple cross-sell and upsell opportunities.
- Operational & disruption customer journey: Designing the blueprint of the easyJet end-to-end customer journey to understand expectations, performance analysis and opportunities for experience optimisation. CACI also developed an aspirational customer journey, showing an improved, consistent, multi-touch experience for disrupted travellers as they prepare for their flights.
- MarTech implementation: CACI helped easyJet select new MarTech platforms (mParticle and Braze) and implement the new solutions, including campaign migration and activation. Working collaboratively with MarTech partners, CACI and easyJet stakeholders defined requirements that would help power personalised customer communications.
- Operational & disruption contact strategy: Leveraging new MarTech and customer journeys, designing contact strategies to increase relevancy and accuracy through personalised messaging.
- Operational change: Understanding the current design and team structures across the marketing function, identifying challenges and bottlenecks in processes, skills gaps and capabilities, leading to a defined operating model that would enable easyJet to fully leverage the new capabilities, redirect core skills to higher-value activities and create efficiencies by redefining roles and responsibilities across core teams.
The use of Miro, a cloud-based visual collaboration platform designed to help teams brainstorm, plan and execute projects in a shared digital space, was also critical in the delivery of this project. Finally, easyJet was supplied a Socialisation Pack to consolidate findings, strategies and tactical actions to be shared across the business.
Results
This initiative has already delivered measurable commercial and experiential impact, helping easyJet become more resilient, customer-centric and operationally efficient.
Through the setup and implementation of the new MarTech stack, CACI enabled a real-time customer communications platform for easyJet that moved away from legacy systems and technical debt, including:
- 10+ data and system integrations, with web, warehouse, analytics and automated GDPR management
- 200+ customer and behavioural events/data points that can be used for targeting and personalisation
- Migrating over 40 million customer profiles, taking them through a process of IP warming to ensure campaign deliverability
- Deploying 500+ campaigns, including real-time behavioural triggers and data processing campaigns
- Training and support for easyJet development and communications teams.
CACI was also tasked with proving the value of a customer-first communications approach against the existing trade-led strategy. The team designed multiple contact strategies around different audiences to bring the new strategies to life while utilising easyJet’s price-led messaging. The resulting Winter Sale Campaign delivered:
- 57% fewer emails sent (but more personalised)
- 5% increase in email open rate
- 21% increase in click through rate
- >2x revenue generated per email sent.
Furthermore, CACI developed a comprehensive toolkit that, when implemented, will enable easyJet to lead the category in disruption management. Complete with 203 data-driven, actionable recommendations, the airline can significantly improve passenger experiences during disruption events across three distinct categories of opportunities. These either directly depend on or enable communication management capabilities in the near-mid-term.
These results demonstrate how strategic transformation, when paired with service design and data-driven insight, delivers value at scale. EasyJet is now positioned not only to weather disruption but win customer loyalty.
Case study
International Tourist Model
Summary
Third party mobile geolocation data can accurately track where domestic visitors live and shopping behaviours, however low sample rates mean it is less reliable in understanding the movement of international visitors.
The International Tourist Model has been developed to address the inherent limitations of mobile geolocation data in accurately capturing the proportion of international tourist visits to specific locations. By integrating VisitBritain data with CACI’s Local Footprint dataset, this model offers a comprehensive and robust solution.
Industry
Technology
Products used
Challenge
Mobile app data, which relies on location “pings” from smartphones to analyse customer behaviour and footfall patterns, is a powerful and highly accurate tool for identifying domestic visitors. However, due to lower adoption of UK-based apps among international tourists, the use of VPNs, and varying data protection regulations across countries, mobile app data struggles to reliably identify international visitors.
To overcome this, CACI has developed the International Tourist Model with three core objectives:
- Accurately represent the proportion of international tourist footfall at different locations.
- Provide insights into the continental origins of international tourists.
- Report these data points across different time periods.
Third-party mobile geolocation data is less reliable for tracking international visitors due to low sample rates.
Mobile app data struggles to identify international visitors because of lower app adoption, VPN usage, and varying data protection regulations.
The International Tourist Model integrates third party data with CACI’s Local Footprint dataset to accurately represent international tourist footfall.
Solution
By leveraging government-published data on inbound and domestic tourism and blending with CACI’s Local Footprint data, and third-party geolocation data enabled us to infer the relative presence of international tourists through a data cleansing and modelling process.
Results
The model has demonstrated clear value and has already been implemented across multiple projects, delivering tangible benefits to clients to allow these to understand the true mix of user groups interacting with their assets.
Case study
How CACI updated the Ocean consumer lifestyle database using AI techniques
Summary
CACI’s Ocean database contains variables relating to consumer attitudes and behaviours of the UK population at individual and household level.
Whilst already providing a market leading solution, a major update gave CACI the opportunity to rebuild many of the associated predictive models using AI techniques to even further improve the modelling, and to make predictions more balanced and “fair” across demographic subgroups such as sex and age groups.
Industry
Technology
Products used
Challenge
Traditional classification techniques optimise “mathematical accuracy,” which measures the number of predicted labels that match the true labels; however, optimising solely for this measure can result in an imbalance in prediction quality across Yes and No labels (as to whether particular behaviours, interests or attitudes are exhibited), and unfairness across demographic subgroups such as sex and age, especially when there is a natural imbalance in the true Yes/No label proportions, i.e. where behaviours have a strong skew towards a particular sex or age group.
Addressing these deficiencies is an area of ongoing research within the AI community.
Ocean enhances clients understanding of their customers by indicating their likely attitudes and behaviours
Traditional modelling methods can be biased in terms of prediction quality for different sexes and/or age groups
The challenge was to remove this bias, achieved by developing new AI based techniques that can optimise across both sex and age groups
Solution
Advances in machine learning science and computational power allow Ocean to use a targeted technique for each variable rather than a one-size-fits-all approach.
CACI has developed new in-house classification techniques that significantly improve standard methods to ensure balanced prediction quality across both Yes and No predictions and demographic subgroups.
For fairness, various measures can be used. CACI specifically optimises its predictions as measured by the Equalised Odds Difference, across sex (Male/Female/Unknown) by default or across age bands or both.
Results
Fairness has been implemented across age and sex to ensure we are more accurately predicting attributes and behaviours whilst eliminating bias.
In addition, a set of insightful driver variables has been added, enabling the modelling to achieve a better understanding of the real world, and over 100 new variables have been introduced for the latest version of Ocean.
Case study
Using the H3 geospatial tiling system to improve spatial resolution of demographic data
Summary
A method has been established by CACI that uses a hexagonal tiling system to disaggregate demographic and other population-based data down to small scale to enable more accurate and precise location modelling and forecasting, particularly in countries where such data is only available at a high geographic level.
Industry
Technology
Products used
H3 Geospatial Tiling System
Challenge
CACI have data for over 250 markets covering 95% of the world’s countries. However, the detail of data available varies from country to country. One of the limitations for certain use cases is the size of geographic area at which demographic data is available, as this data drives understanding of locations and consumer demand at a local level. In countries such as Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, and parts of Middle East Asia, the granularity of data is such that there may be only one geographic area with one set of figures for a whole town or municipality, so understanding demographic and spend dynamics in different parts of that town is not possible.
The challenge was to find a way to disaggregate high level geographic data to smaller areas.
CACI provides data for 95% of the world’s countries
In some countries available demographic and spend data is high level, and a methodology was sought to disaggregate such data to make it more usable for understanding local markets
This methodology would be applicable across all countries providing comparable levels of detail worldwide
Solution
CACI resolved this challenge by combining the source data with two geographic datasets.
The first is H3, which is a discrete global grid system for indexing geographies into a hexagonal grid, developed at Uber. These hexagons are available at a range of scales, but the one considered most suitable for the majority of CACI’s client market applications is “Level 9”, which provides hexagons approximately 400m wide.
These hexagons could be overlaid onto the supplied data boundaries to disaggregate the data equally across all hexagons within each boundary. This would assume that the population was evenly distributed in each area, which is a very simplistic approach. Better to weight this by the population across the area, and to do this a second dataset was used; population estimates based on official sources as well as other sources such as satellite imagery of buildings, giving very granular results.
By combining this with the H3 hexagons we could assign demographic and spend data to each hexagon using the distribution of total population as a weighting function, so that those hexagons containing higher population would receive a proportionally larger share of the source data.
Scale is a challenge due to the computational requirements for these calculations, but with an optimised work flow, and using powerful data platforms this process has been highly successful.
Results
H3 has revolutionised how we are able to advise clients on consumer demand. We have taken what was previously high-level market data and disaggregated it to deliver more localised, insightful analysis. For example, in Saudi Arabia, we previously had a view of just 8 broad, high-level regions, which are now disaggregated into over 30,000 hexagonal zones, unlocking a level of detail never before possible in the region.
By using H3, we apply a consistent geographic lens across the world. This allows CACI to seamlessly blend multiple data sets, such as mobile data, with demographic data to create a single, unified view. This creates a reliable single source of truth that enables a more granular and accurate view of markets that can be compared across countries for more informed decision making.
This granular view is a game-changer for any organisation wanting to get a low-level view of market opportunity anywhere in the world.
Case study
Using the Bedrock Agent to respond to customer queries
Summary
The CACI team has developed a method using Amazon Bedrock Agent to respond to customer queries.
Industry
Technology
Products used
Challenge
CACI has multiple software products and most of these products have their help pages. These help pages are hosted in different environments using different formats. When customers have any questions related to the products to related to how to do things, they go to these sites/documents, browse through the pages and finally find the answer. This process is not user friendly and often wastes a lot of valuable time. Some products have help pages saved in different files, which makes finding answers more difficult.
The challenge was to find a way to easily find answers to questions from the help manual(s).
Solution
CACI resolved this challenge using Amazon bedrock agent and demonstrated this in Pin Routes. Users can click on the icon and ask questions. The agent returns satisfactory answers. If the agent cannot find answers to the questions in the manual, it returns a message saying it could not find the answer to the questions.
Amazon bedrock agent has some advantages over other technologies that were investigated:
- Native AWS services. Low setup effort and maintained by AWS.
- Built in Guardrails, blocking harmful queries and inappropriate responses
- Well documented API and SDK support allowing for relatively easy integration
- Functionality can be extended as required
AI backend can be standardised across multiple products and services, the integration will vary.
Results
Amazon bedrock agent has revolutionised how customers access the help or retrieve answers to their questions.
This granular view is a game-changer for any organisation or product wanting to improve user experience and increase the usage of the products.
Case study
Driving performance through the Centre Growth Model
Summary
CACI has long advised its retail property clients on strategies to grow sales and footfall at their assets. The Centre Growth Model combines CACI, client and third-party dataset to give clients a clear direction on how, where and who to grow sales from across their customer base.
Industry
Property
Services used
Centre Growth Model
Challenge
CACI property clients need to grow customer sales at their retail destinations (e.g. regional malls, retail parks, outlet centres) to increase the value of their assets. Understanding how often a customer visits, how much they spend on a visit, and who doesn’t visit (but should), versus the performance of peer group locations allows clients to understand what good looks like, where to improve, and ultimately settle on the most appropriate strategy for growth.
Clients need to understand customer behaviour and benchmark against peers to develop effective growth strategies.
The Centre Growth Model combines various datasets to guide clients on growing sales and footfall.
The model uses geographic and demographic data to identify growth opportunities and optimize marketing efforts
Solution
Strategies for customer growth can be complex and will vary through both geographic location (how far away a shopper is from a retail destination) and demographic and economic factors (how much discretionary spend they have available).
The Centre Growth Model takes these complex issues into account and converts them into three simple metrics to drive growth:
- getting existing shoppers to spend more
- getting existing shoppers to visit more frequently
- getting new shoppers to visit the asset
By analysing geographic and demographic data, the model identifies the best growth opportunities. It compares client assets to benchmark retail locations to understand areas of over and underperformance, providing targeted guidance for leasing and marketing activities to achieve maximum impact.
Results
By leveraging the Centre Growth Model, our clients can now confidently pinpoint customers and geographies that offer the greatest potential for growth in both turnover and footfall. This insight enables them to strategically focus their marketing efforts on high-impact zones, ensuring optimal return on investment whilst also avoiding unnecessary spend in less effective areas.
Case study
Supporting the Complex, Growing Operational Requirements of an Entire Laravel Ecosystem
Summary
Worcester Bosch is one of the UK’s leading manufacturer of boilers and water heating products. As their extensive, business-critical digital ecosystem of websites, portals and applications has grown throughout the years, they required support to ensure that their platforms could continue delivering long-term value for the business. CACI became the lead agency for Worcester Bosch’s entire ecosystem of Laravel applications, supporting and scaling its ever-evolving requirements and realigning their digital roadmap.
Company Size
500+
Industry
Manufacturing
Products used
Laravel, AWS, React Native
Challenge
Worcester Bosch has an extensive digital ecosystem built on the Laravel framework consisting of multiple websites, portals and applications, providing business-critical information and services across their complex operations. This includes their customer-facing website; a professional installer portal; the back-office system handling enquiries and content management, MyBosch where end users can undertake administrative tasks related to their products and many more.
The complex application was built on the Laravel framework in one large monolithic codebase that evolved iteratively and scaled in size in-line with business requirements over the past decade. This means that there are numerous interlinked dependencies in the ecosystem that all need to work in harmony. Worcester Bosch needed a team of experts who could breathe new life into the ecosystem and ensure it could continue delivering value for the business into the future.
To rejuvenate the project in this way and ensure it was development-ready for new features, including planned mobile app relaunches including its Professional app, CACI needed to assess the entire Laravel application architecture, hosting infrastructure, and codebase to generate a roadmap of for upgrade and development delivered through Agile methodologies to improve the application’s reliability, scalability and performance.
Solution
We first completed a technical audit of the entire digital ecosystem to understand and identify the bottlenecks and areas to improve around the long-term stability of the hosting infrastructure to enable the future vision of the application. Then, working in partnership with the Worcester Bosch team, we put new Agile methodologies in place, helping establish a new DevOps culture, complete with team training. Underpinned by a bespoke documentation system; empowering the team to resolve tickets quickly and efficiently.
We then upgraded the application to the most recent version of Laravel to stabilise and improve the resilience of the application and provide a solid foundation for renewed growth. We also rewrote outdated test cares that saw improved QA efficiency, fewer bugs being reported and reduced time required for user application testing.
We recommended a ‘lift and shift’ of the application to improve hosting costs, sustainability and overall resilience. Planning and carrying out an entire ecosystem reprovisioning and migration in AWS in just 3 months; now maintaining a dedicated team that supports with 24/7/365 monitoring, penetration testing and automated tests to ensure continuous system uptime and availability.
After the AWS migration and application upgrade enabled Worcester Bosch to resume business as usual and restart their roadmap delivery, we then delivered an accessibility refresh of the main customer website, and built a new user-friendly, mobile Professional App in React Native in just three months. Something that Worcester Bosch had identified that would help it maintain its top position with installers against new market entrants.
Results
Our ongoing partnership with Worcester Bosch on their Laravel application transformation has delivered measurable improvements across its digital ecosystem.
After the full migration to AWS hosting, Worcester Bosch experienced a 95% reduction in downtime and incidents. Since we implemented improvements, the reliability of the application has increased by 32 times and the average page load time reduced by half.
We continue our work making sure the Laravel application is up to date, patching vulnerabilities found through pen testing and code audits, improving performance and security; on the latest pen test, there were no ‘Normal’ or ‘High’ priority issues. All helping the application reach its full potential, delivering on the diverse needs of Worcester Bosch’s internal and external stakeholders and their innovative product roadmap.
The new Professional App exceeded its download target of 10,000 downloads in the first six months and achieved a remarkable NPS score jump of +46 from the previous app, going from an average of -17 to +29. Installers praising the app for its ease of use and functionality: “really simple to use and now works for me” and the app recognised with a prestigious BIMA Award in the highly competitive Digital Product Build Category.
Case study
Transforming digital learning for law enforcement through inclusive, user-centred design
Summary
The College of Policing needed to consolidate and modernise its digital ecosystem to better deliver on its mission to support everyone working in policing with professional knowledge and skills. It had a variety of inflexible, poorly integrated and inconsistent microsites not designed with accessibility or user needs in mind. CACI delivered a comprehensive discovery, UX and content design, prototyping and build programme that resulted in a single future-ready learning experience — guided by extensive user research, accessibility best practices, and alignment with Government Digital Service standards.
Company size
600+
Industry
Education
Challenge
The existing legacy platform was fragmented across inconsistent multiple microsites that weren’t meeting the needs of the College’s internal teams or external users and learners. The sites were difficult to update, with limited integration and poor content management capabilities.
The platform wasn’t designed for users with diverse needs and had accessibility gaps which meant it did not meet WCAG compliance and was not consistent with the inclusive design approach required by Home Office-led service assessments.
Both internal and external users struggled with fragmented experiences, confused content architecture and unclear user journeys that could not be measured properly causing confusion and low engagement with digital learning content.
Solution
CACI led a full discovery phase, engaging 180+ users including officers, trainers, and internal staff through in-depth interviews. This user research surfaced diverse needs and shaped a prioritised delivery roadmap. We mapped the user journeys of different learner types, co-created detailed personas, and audited the content, accessibility and usability of the existing sites.
Working in Agile sprints in continual collaboration with the College team, we designed a service blueprint and structured information architecture for a single learning platform built on Drupal CMS. This was validated multiple prototypes through usability testing and prioritised flexible learning pathways.
As a major content strategy and design project, we ultimately restructured, consolidated and migrated millions of words of content relating to police best practise and devised clear content strategy, workflows and governance that ensured the site could quickly deliver the correct, consistent up-to-date content – a key user painpoint.
We embedded inclusive human-centred design principles – ensuring alignment with Government Digital Service (GDS) and WCAG standards. To support this approach, we upskilled College of Policing team members across the organisation through training to ensure that once the consolidated platform was live, this inclusive approach could be maintained.
Results
This project demonstrates how user centred design and technology can be used for genuine digital transformation, changing what our clients do and how they do it. This was not just about implementing a new Drupal CMS from a technical perspective – we tailored the publishing experience to the operational needs of its College.
To help the College realise their goal of becoming the go-to resource for information, learning and research in policing, we then implemented a powerful Algolia search that was 200x faster and could integrate sources from multiple external sources and British police for websites.
This was delivered via a truly accessible, scalable Drupal platform with a robust content and SEO strategy that passed Government Digital Standards assessments first time and achieved a 100 Google Lighthouse score for performance, accessibility and SEO at launch and 96% in an independent accessibility audit score against WCAG 2.1 AA.
As a result, our work has touched every single department of the College of Policing in some way, from user journeys and content strategy, to DevOps support, to upskilling their internal teams and inspiring cultural change. Reflected in the feedback from the Home Office that said it was “great to see the CACI and College’s cross-functional team positively tackling such a vast organisational/cultural challenge”
Case study
Enhancing Compare the Market’s mortgage comparison product through User Centred Design (UCD) and iterative UX
Summary
Compare the Market is a leading UK price comparison service and one of its most well-known brands. They wanted to improve their mortgage comparison service’s user experience and product to improve its performance and reduce the rate of users dropping off without completing the process. Collaborating with CACI, the joint team initiated a series of design sprints to address specific user, web technology and data-driven challenges. The initial project’s success led to a comprehensive redesign of their digital mortgage proposition, resulting in significant improvements in user engagement and completion rates.
Company size
1,000+
Industry
Financial Services
Challenge
Compare The Market’s had launched an end-to-end mortgage comparison service on their website which saw customer provide their financial information, review mortgage options from different lenders and then ideally apply for a mortgage via the site. However, results were below expectations with a 50% user drop-off rate before completion.
We needed to understand and identify measurable improvements to different user journeys including first-time buyer, remortgage, buy-to-let and mover to make the necessary UX recommendations that would enable the Compare The Market in-house team and senior stakeholders to understand and implement the changes needed.
As the service was already ‘live’, there was a need for an Agile and iterative UX design approach, supported by effective product management and backed by user research and usability testing, that could deliver the service changes without disruption and to work within Compare The Market’s existing design system.
In addition, as Compare the Market was implementing a wider UX-driven digital transformation, it was crucial for us to share our knowledge, UX processes and best practice to support Compare The Market’s wider long-term aspirations around user research and testing.
Solution
CACI commenced with an intensive discovery sprint, collaborating closely with Compare the Market’s team to identify and address key user experience issues. By analysing user data and feedback, we pinpointed areas causing friction in the mortgage comparison journey.
We then followed with a collaborative design discovery and ideation workshop, grouping customers by behaviour and need types, and conducted a UX audit on the service’s existing interfaces.
From this, we crafted proto-personas and empathy maps, backed up with customer research including 60 hours of user interviews that identified the reasons behind the high drop-off rate: apprehension and form fatigue. We then prototyped, developed and user tested a more streamlined, intuitive, and user-friendly journey, implementing iterative design improvements based on real user interactions ensuring enhancements effectively addressed the identified challenges.
The partnership evolved into a long-term collaboration, supporting the continuous refinement of the mortgage proposition to better serve users’ needs. Documenting UX processes and best practice in a digital playbook, covering everything from how to create research study guides, recruiting participants and managing consent; to conducting ethical research in-line with MRS’ code of conduct.
Results
Through our 200+ hours of qualitative service and user research and UX design approach, we reduced the number of user facing questions by 70% and users presented with actionable results much earlier in the process.
After further optimising the user experience over 10 design sprints, the improvement comparison tool now had 80% of users completing their remortgage calculator submissions, surpassing our initial target of 65%.
In terms of Compare The Market’s objectives around UX transformation in the business, when surveyed, the client rated our communication and knowledge sharing at 100%. The playbook and support enabling them to scale their design and user research practice.
Case study
Transforming National Highway’s Dart Charge with user-centred design, service design and agile methodologies
Summary
National Highways is the government organisation which builds, maintains and operates Britain’s motorways and major roads. They are responsible for the Dart Charge, a congestion charging system on the Dartford Crossing – the bridge and tunnels that crucially connect the M25 between Essex and Kent.
As a public service, National Highways needed to update and improve the Dart Charge service to reduce penalty charge notices (PCNs) and improve user experience. As the Dart Charge service had previously failed to meet UK Government Digital Service (GDS) standards, National Highways and the programme needed assurance and support from a team with in-depth knowledge and experience of working to GDS standards, as well as Service Design and UX, which is where CACI came in.
Company size
5,000+
Industry
Government
Challenge
The project plan and requirements stated that National Highways wanted the service to meet GOV.UK standards and pass its Alpha assessment, but there were no details on how this would be achieved by the contracted suppliers. CACI needed to help ensure a coherent, smooth, end-to-end user-centred project in this Alpha phase and guide the multi-faceted team to ensure the new digital Dart Charge met GDS standards for the first time.
We had to understand the existing end-to-end service and legacy platform to identify where it failed to meet diverse user needs and contributed to high PCN rates. These insights were needed to highlight UX/CX gaps, skills shortages—particularly around accessibility – and support procurement of the right people and services to build a successful multi-disciplinary team.
A final objective was to embed Service Design and user-centred design principles and working practices and oversee prototypes for the new service using the GOV.UK prototyping toolkit – refined through iteration and user testing- that Dart Charge service owners could use to meet user needs and resolve the pain points we identified.
Solution
CACI initiated a comprehensive service design strategy, beginning with in-depth user research encompassing various user personas, including neurodiverse individuals and those with limited digital access. This research informed the creation of detailed ‘as-is’ and ‘to-be’ service blueprints, highlighting areas for improvement.
To meet the GDS Service Standard meant educating and collaborating with multiple stakeholders and suppliers was a vital part of the work. CACI engaged with multiple government technology vendors and suppliers and introduced Agile methodologies, user-centred design practices and gave guidance on governance, operations, and day-to-day activities, all fostering a new culture of iterative development and continuous feedback.
We also provided practical guidance to the team on passing the Alpha service assessment, creating a working plan to meet – and evidence – all 14 aspects of the GDS Service Standards. Drilling down further to a structured methodology with 100+ practical steps needed to meet them, suppliers then providing the CACI team with evidence of how they are taking these steps, tracking their progress against the required criteria.
Accessibility was a core focus, with designs and prototypes tested against WCAG guidelines to ensure inclusivity. The team also addressed operational challenges, identifying skill gaps and recommending the integration of accessibility and service design experts.
Results
Meeting GDS Service Standards can often be thought of as a tick box exercise, but we wanted to steer this towards being a brilliant service. Our hands-on, empathetic, highly user-centred approach was a key contributor to National Highways’ success in the Dart Charge moving through the Alpha service assessment successfully, the first time in 7 years it had done so.
National Highways are now using this project as an internal case study for learning how to deal with future programs involving other crossings. The National Highways team are also using this project as a learning tool on what it means to go through – a meet – a GOV.UK service assessment process.
Case study
Digitising Civil Service Assessments for greater inclusion and operational efficiency at The Cabinet Office Fast Stream Assessment Centre (FSAC)
Summary
The Cabinet Office’s Fast Stream and Early Talent programme aims to identify leadership potential within the Civil Service, with a specific focus on improving diversity and success with traditionally underrepresented groups. The original in-person, entirely paper-based assessment process – the Fast Stream Assessment Centre (FSAC) – took place in two offices in London and Newcastle and presented challenges both in accessibility and operational efficiency. Both of which needed to be tackled in a new, secure, inclusive remote service, if FSAC was to achieve its objectives.
Company Size
7,000+
Industry
Government
Challenge
The traditional assessment centres in London and Newcastle were in-person and paper-based processes. They were resource-intensive and inefficient for FSAC team members, and had limited accessibility for candidates nationwide.
There were accessibility barriers for underrepresented groups. Disabled, neurodiverse, and BAME candidates faced challenges with the existing assessment format, leading to lower success rates and so needed an end-to-end service that reassured and boosts confidence for such candidates.
This combination of factors including the COVID-19 pandemic, meant there was an urgent need for digital transformation that necessitated a swift transition to an inclusive, Government Digital Service-compliant, remote assessment model without compromising security or the integrity of the assessment process.
The service needed to be implemented in such a way that allowed continuous improvement and adaptation to user needs over time and that Cabinet Office and FSAC stakeholders had the skills, capabilities and positive inclination for the adoption of the new service model.
Solution
CACI led the digital transformation of the Fast Stream Assessment Centre (FSAC) by adopting an Agile, human-centred Service Design approach. The team conducted extensive user research to understand the needs of diverse candidates and assessors. The resulting Empathy and Journey Maps that enabled us to start reimagine the entire end-to-end service experience for all stakeholders.
We mapped out the “current-state” physical assessment experience and designed the desired “future-state” of a new remote service; the blueprints highlighting pain points and opportunities for improvement with all stakeholders: candidates, admins, assessors and other internal team members.
From a Service Design perspective which looks at the ability of the organisation to provide the desired service experience, we identified gaps in technology, processes and skillsets that needed to be addressed to deliver the new operational model. As well as a new design solution, we developed a bespoke technology platform on Drupal CMS configured as a learning management system that allowed assessors could dynamically alter content in real-time and keep to strict time constraints, embedded with robust accessibility measures exceeding WCAG guidelines.
Taking an Agile, collaborative approach with FSAC team members and in line with GDS standards, the platform was built hosted on Gov.UK PaaS to ensure scalability and security. Rigorous usability testing and risk assessments were conducted to mitigate potential challenges, such as candidates leaking content onto social media.
Results
With improving candidate diversity and inclusion and operational efficiency the Fast Stream objectives, the new, fully-remote FSAC digital service delivered on every front, achieving drastic improvements in success rates of all under-represented candidates through addressing specific barriers and providing empathetic, tailored support:
- 120% increase in the number of successful Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic candidates
- 63% uplift in the number of successful disabled candidates
- 34% rise in successful candidates from lower socio-economic backgrounds
Through meticulous planning, risk mitigation and change management, the new service also successfully passed each GDS Service Standard assessment at Alpha, Beta, and Live at first-time of asking; achieving a 100% client satisfaction from the Cabinet Office team.
Due to the operational improvements achieved by the new service, FSAC was transformed into a multi-site application (Final Selection Board) so all FSBs across the Civil Service could benefit from the solution.
The FSAC platform has so achieved multiple awards; including a Civil Service Award for Advancing Disability Inclusion, Total Recruitment Award for “Best Innovation in Student Recruitment” and recognition by the global Service Design Network Awards.
Case study
Delivering ongoing support and digital transformation via a Laravel web application ecosystem, designed to minimise stress for vulnerable users
Summary
Cabot Financial is a group of leading credit management service organisations. They cover several services, including debt purchasing and business process outsourcing. We’d previously worked with debt recovery firm dlc to deliver their multiple award-winning mydlc platform, which helped customers to resolve debt in the best way for them at what can be a difficult time.
So, when Cabot acquired dlc, they chose CACI as their partner to kickstart their own digital transformation and growth in the debt management space. A relationship which started in 2015 and continues until today.
Company size
1000+
Industry
Financial Services
Challenge
As an ambitious company looking to grow the scope of its credit management services in multiple markets, Cabot needed digital ecosystem that was highly user-centric, able to scale with its business aspirations over time and be continually compliant with relevant industry bodies, such as the Financial Conduct Authority.
This required a deeply empathic user-centred design approach to define and establish a solid architecture and scalable, fully integrated digital platform that could meet both back-office requirements and support vulnerable users in what is often a highly stressful situation.
Solution
The project began with in-depth quantitative and qualitative user research. As Cabot’s users are often vulnerable and under financial stress, understanding their needs was essential. These insights shaped user journeys, information architecture, and features—ensuring users could easily find information, complete tasks, and manage their finances.
We chose Laravel for its flexibility and scalability to build a user-friendly website and native mobile app. These included e-commerce features, a customer portal with integrated payment gateway, and a restructured system architecture. Using Agile methodologies, we moved from Alpha to Beta and launched a live MVP in just six weeks.
The Laravel application integrated seamlessly with Cabot’s back-office systems via REST APIs, Opayo for payments, and third-party services like Salesforce. To support 24/7 operations, we implemented robust hosting practices and managed DevOps pipelines for continuous updates and performance improvements.
We later migrated the platform to Microsoft Azure, enhancing security, efficiency, and cost-effectiveness. Over time, we scaled the application with features like TouchID login, online statements, and self-service tools—empowering users to manage their accounts independently.
Laravel’s architecture has enabled multi-brand deployment, sharing core business logic while allowing custom design and features tailored to specific user and market needs.
Results
The initial platform demonstrated success very quickly:20,000 customers signed up within the first 12 months and the work received multiple awards recognition including Best Use of Technology with The Drum’s Agency Business Awards. More than 1 million customers have now been helped on the digital platform and the application has been white labelled and rolled out four other brands across multiple countries.
We are still actively supporting the Cabot team with ongoing roadmap development to provide their customers with yet more self-service features and scale and increase the efficiency of the platform. All the while continuing to act as their digital transformation and lead Laravel partner helping them support the ever-changing needs of their vulnerable users and comply with the FCA’s Consumer Duty and other evolving regulatory challenges.
Case study
How Allwyn uses CACI’s territory & route optimisation tools to successfully expand their field sales team & stores
Summary
Allwyn officially took over as operator of the UK National Lottery at the beginning of 2024. As part of this major acquisition, Allwyn has grown its sales team to deliver key initiatives as part of the new licence. To successfully do so required a two-fold objective:
1. Ensure a smooth running of visits for existing Retail Sales Executives covering over 40,000 stores on a quarterly basis.
2. Grow the size of the team to 155 Retail Sales Executives to increase the quantity and quality of visits.
CACI had established a long-standing relationship with the previous operator of the National Lottery and had a proven track record of delivering projects for them. Allwyn therefore knew it could turn to CACI as a trusted partner who would understand the work required to help meet their objectives.
Company size
6,000+
Industry
Leisure, Arts & Entertainment
Products used
Challenge
New territories and routes needed to be designed to quickly set the wheels in motion.
As an expanded field team, Allwyn had to ensure that these routes and territories were optimal to meet deadlines and mitigate any disruption from the previous operator’s handover.
Solution
Allwyn commissioned CACI to undertake a headcount analysis and territory optimisation project using CACI’s territory optimisation tool, InSite FieldForce. CACI went on to create optimal routing solutions for Allwyn, using their cloud-based route optimisation software, CallSmart Web, to ensure the following:
- A correctly sized team would be in place for their expanded network of over 40,000 stores
- Ideal locations to recruit new Retail Sales Executives would be known
- Territories are optimised to balance work evenly, maximising each Retail Sales Executive’s potential
- The number of scheduled visits would be maximised and driving time minimised.
With their team of experienced field marketing optimisation experts, CACI was able to bolster the above objectives for Allwyn. Allwyn has also licenced CallSmart Web, which enables them to self-serve and optimise routes once personnel are in place. Ongoing training and support for Allwyn is provided by CACI’s experts during this transitory period as they move towards more software usage.
Results
Following CACI’s headcount analysis and territory optimisation work, Allwyn’s Retail Sales Executives have been working with balanced workloads, ensuring they are neither overworked nor underutilised, with an average utilisation (including commute) of 86%. This helps the business understand whether there is sufficient time remaining for additional tasks such as prospecting, admin and more.
The territory optimisation work has enabled Retail Sales Executives to spend 79% of their time with customers, and less time driving. This is in addition to achieving their target number of visits per day.
The fair distribution of workload has also meant that CallSmart Web is able to produce the best possible schedules for all of Allwyn’s 155 Retail Sales Executives, leading to 100% of scheduled visits across a 10-week call cycle.
The combination of using CACI’s expertise via consultancy and software solutions has allowed Allwyn to successfully go live with its expanded field sales team of 155 Retail Sales Executives while continuing to ensure a smooth running of all visits across their store universe of over 40,000 outlets. This highlights the importance of a tailored approach, as well as the countless benefits of optimised and efficient territories as well as visit schedules. CACI continues to be on hand to provide technical expertise and support to ensure a continued success for this partnership.
Case study
Creating a scalable customer journey framework, through human-centred service design
Summary
Handelsbanken are a major Swedish bank; their central proposition is they are a ‘relationship bank’ offering a truly personal service. Each branch operates as a local business, with an in-depth understanding of the local market and community; services tailored to each client’s needs.
Handelsbanken had always focused on delivering excellent experiences and services. However, when the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) announced a new Consumer Duty was due to come into force, this was a catalyst for Handelsbanken to implement a formal, structured user and customer experience analysis and action plan.
Company size
10,000+
Industry
Finance
Services used
Challenge
The Consumer Duty requires financial firms to ensure customers receive helpful and accessible customer support, clear information, and products and services that meet their needs and offer fair value. Firms must proactively protect customers from harm and ensure customers in a vulnerable situation, such as financial difficulty or during life events like bereavement, are not disadvantaged or put at risk. Firms must also identify and tackle pain points causing customers harm.
Handelsbanken’s challenge was to ensure they could meet – and evidence – their new regulatory requirements. This requires a culture of customer research, a workforce empowered to achieve the bank’s customer-centred objectives, and toolkits and governance systems in place so stakeholders in the independent branches can work to consistent standards, creating cohesive customer experiences across all channels.
With our experience in Service Design, governance, and training, we were chosen to create a new scalable customer journey framework and embed a customer-centred approach into the existing ‘Handelsbanken Way’.
Solution
From the beginning, we worked closely with Handelsbanken’s internal teams to create a detailed working process and roadmap, using business analyst insights into operational processes in branches to inform our work.
We undertook extensive quantitative and qualitative research with a diverse range of Handelsbanken team members and customers. Due to Handelsbanken’s unique decentralised model, we needed to approach customer journey and pain point mapping from both a branch and customer perspective.
In addition to our usual definition, creation and validation of customer persona groups, to meet the Consumer Duty guidelines we also created 5 vulnerability lenses, that could overlay any customer persona and journey, to identify and trigger the appropriate support and sensitivity for a customer’s circumstances, whether in the case of ill health, fraud or financial difficulty, for example.
A critical part of our work was supporting Handelsbanken’s team with the tools and culture to deliver this new customer journey approach in practice. We developed the concept of a review panel with senior stakeholders, to create a pain point prioritisation roadmap and took outcomes into ideation and put into action quick wins ahead of the Consumer Duty July 31st 2023 deadline.
Results
We analysed the bank’s 54 services and products and identified 99 customer journeys as being in the scope of Consumer Duty. We uncovered 375 pain points for customers, of which 128 were classified as having potential to cause customer harm; running ideation sessions to establish solutions for the 128 priority areas to address.
This was mapped and visualised into a structured framework that will deepen Handelsbanken’s relationship with customers from the day they come on board, right through to ending the relationship – as well as be used to evidence and ensure compliance towards the Consumer Duty.
The insights gathered throughout this process were methodically and transparently documented and collated into a detailed digital knowledge base including context and guidance, how-to guides, templates, case studies, artefacts, and much more. Providing the foundation for ongoing continuous improvement and internal work.
We worked collaboratively with people across the bank, developing a cross-bank operating methodology and providing staff training around customer-centred design. All of this helping to embed the framework and Consumer Duty compliance into Handelsbanken business-as-usual.
Case study
Somerset NHS Foundation Trust chooses Synergy as its costing solution
Summary
Somerset NHS Foundation trust (SFT) is the first trust on the English mainland to provide community, mental health and acute hospital services. We spoke to Peter Fry, Head of Costing and SLR, about the recent trust changes and how Synergy is helping them join up their costing data.
In 2017, Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and Taunton and Somerset NHS Foundation Trust formed an alliance designed to support a close working relationship between the two trusts. Later that year, the trusts moved to working from a single, joined up set of objectives that spanned across all services.
As this approach progressed and colleagues reported on the benefit gained from working in this way, they sought to go a step further and formally merge. This came to fruition in April 2020, where the trusts merged to become Somerset Foundation NHS Trust.
Prior to the merger, Peter had come from working on the mental health and community costing side at Somerset Partnership NHS Foundation trust. Since the merger he is now is working with an income and costing team of six, which works across all services (acute, mental health and community) and cover costing, service line reporting (SLR), contract and reporting.
Company size
14,000+
Industry
Healthcare
Products used
Challenge
Choosing a system
Initially, both trusts had been using different costing solutions. A decision had to be made on a sole solution to take them forward.
Peter explains: “When we merged and we were considering which solution to go with, during our search we spoke to a lot of other trusts who told us their stories around how they were using CACI’s recent developments in Synergy and the good experience and improvements they were able to make through using it”.
There were a number of factors that impacted the decision to elect CACI and Synergy as their costing solution, and flexibility with complex data, was a high priority on the list.
Solution
Peter goes on to describe the benefit, both technically and financially, for the costing team of being able to develop and build in Synergy.
“We’ve got a really good costing team in house, so we weren’t looking for a provider who would go away and do all of the work for us. In addition to the high costs involved of a provider doing it all for us, we wanted to build it ourselves so we know how it works, and when we share the data with people we know how each and every cost has been arrived at, and can communicate that effectively. So, when we sat down to review which solution to go with, it was very clear that Synergy was the logical decision and would work better with our requirements”.
Finally, Peter talks about how the outputs from Synergy will become extremely important in the coming months and so this was also a big factor when choosing a solution.
“The output is also something that’s really important, and the ability to output data into other front end analytics solutions like Power BI, means Synergy delivers even more value and cost savings to the trust – none of the other providers we were looking at could do that. This also means, as our information team already use Power BI, we’re not having to force others to use a different tool in order to look at our costs.”
Results
“My team really enjoys using Synergy. We’re still developing our costing model to reflect what we’re doing as a trust, and we’re looking forward to the outputs we want to get out of it and how we can use those going forwards”
Other aspects such as training received and the interaction with the CACI customer care team, have meant Peter’s costing team, who don’t come from a costing background, have been able to hit the ground running.
Case study
Sophisticated data models help Scottish Water understand domestic water consumption
Summary
Scottish Water looks after Scotland’s most precious natural resource. From source to tap, they keep customers supplied with world class water. The public water and waste water organisation is responsible for providing water and wastewater services to 2.56 million household customers and 152,806 business premises. Sustainability is a major focus. Scottish Water’s strategic plan supports Scotland’s ambitions for renewable energy generation and carbon reduction.
Company size
1,000 – 5,000
Industry
Utilities
Products used
Challenge
Scottish Water has been working with CACI for over 10 years to deliver accurate models that help predict and review household water consumption.
Understanding water use
Martin Walton, Asset Planner at Scottish Water explains the challenge: “There are hardly any domestic water meters in Scotland. So, we have had to find other ways to stratify our customer base. Using Acorn data, we have built and refined models over the years that give us a clear view of how water is being used. We need this information to help us reduce water consumption by monitoring and controlling leakage, testing and maintaining network assets and influencing consumer behaviour.”
Solution
Acorn data is often associated with marketing, product development, service planning and optimisation. But for Scottish Water, it’s the foundation of a sophisticated model that determines expected usage in locations across Scotland. The insight helps operations and engineering teams to prioritise their activities and pinpoint key areas for investigation.
Scott Young, Leakage Delivery Team Leader at Scottish Water, describes the approach: “In terms of water supply, Scotland is divided into over 3,000 areas, each with a district meter. We inform supply and demand analysis within these areas using our Acorn model. We compare district meter flows to those within the Acorn model to see whether actual water usage is similar to the projected household demand for that area. When there’s a difference, we can investigate whether this is because of unrecorded usage, network anomalies or leakage.”
Martin Walton adds: “The modelled per household consumption dataset has proved to be a very accurate predictor of consumption for the domestic properties we supply.”
Results
Scott Young says: “With the Acorn data, we’ve been able to break down demand by area to understand the opportunity for leakage reduction. Using big data in the digital space is quite a radical change from the traditional mainstream approach to leakage detection. Now, we can identify areas of concern with a high degree of accuracy, even in areas with plastic pipes, where traditional soundings to find leakage are less effective.
“We look at the typical usage profile based on zone control groups that we measure and sample from. We build out models for every area using detailed data from Acorn. This combined approach produces a very accurate flow pattern and a strong benchmark comparator. We refine the model further by taking into account factors that influence peaks and troughs or that could be causing leakage.
“The data modelling also helps us to spot issues with valves at the district boundary. When anomalies appear in area flow measurements compared to the model, we can see where a district is breached and water is leaving. We confirm this by checking data relating to adjacent districts, where that water may be going. These are priority issues to fix so it’s really valuable to identify them quickly.
“When I send a team out on the ground to locate and fix a problem identified via the Acorn data model, we have a very high degree of confidence that we’ll find it where we predicted. That means we can detect and stop leaks more quickly and efficiently.”
Case study
Salford Royal NHS
Summary
Salford Royal NHS is an integrated provider of hospital, community and social care services, with some 750 beds and over 6,900 staff providing a range of services to the 240,000 population of Salford, as well as specialist services to Greater Manchester, the North West and nationally.
Company size
9,000+
Industry
Healthcare
Products used
Challenge
Data insights
Management reporting around patient admin data had become cumbersome and slow, leading to poor and often inaccurate reporting. Resource was often spent fixing current problems, rather than finding new solutions and previous attempts at building an in-house data warehouse had failed. Royal Salford NHS needed a single source of reliable and accurate data that they could gain real insight from.
Solution
CACI’s InView data warehouse provides a single source of information from across PAS, radiology, pathology and EPR modules, data extraction and loading is fully automated, and reports produced daily using SAP BusinessObjects. Qlik dashboards are also used in A&E, offering a live view and analysis of patient data with predictive capabilities.
Results
The role of data has completely changed. Time is now spent analysing results and developing innovative approaches to data handling to drive real-time insights. A&E can predict patient attendance, likely arrival modes and emergency admissions numbers, per weekday and hour. The self-serve model has helped greater engagement and understanding from all departments.
Case study
How Richmond and Wandsworth Borough Councils better understand community needs for services and communication
Summary
Wandsworth Council is a London borough in the southwest of the capital. It includes a diverse population across the settlements of Battersea, Putney, Tooting and Wandsworth Town. The council looks after the needs of around 330,000 residents.
The London Borough of Richmond upon Thames is Wandsworth’s neighbour to the west. It’s the only London borough that straddles the river Thames and includes the settlements of Barnes, East Sheen, Hampton, Kingston, Richmond, Teddington and Twickenham. The council serves a population of around 200,000.
The two boroughs have created a unique shared staffing model to deliver more innovative, flexible, effective and efficient public services across their joint catchments. The insight and analytics team provides data insight for all council functions in the combined areas.
Company size
5,000+
Industry
Non-Profit
Products used
Challenge
Understanding communities
The councils’ insight and analytics team was keen to serve its diverse population better by understanding more about different households and how council services and initiatives could best support them.
Like all councils, Richmond and Wandsworth’s remit spans many public services, campaigns and activities. Insight and Analytics Manager, Salman Klar, and Intelligence Analyst, Emily Heades, saw the vast potential in CACI’s Acorn dataset to better inform decision making and communication in the boroughs. Emily says: “We had a free trial access to the data over the summer, which CACI was offering to help councils with Covid related challenges. We started using Acorn, Household Acorn and Wellbeing Acorn.”
Solution
Salman, Emily and the team were immediately able to make use of the data. Salman explains: “We first used if for our digital exclusion work in May. Because of the pandemic, all our council services and messaging needed to go digital. So it was really important for us to know who would have digital access, laptops and connectivity for remote schooling and access to essential services and information.
“We serve over half a million residents. To communicate with them all effectively, we needed to know who would respond to an email and who could only be reached by a letter or leaflet through the door.”
This use case demonstrated the value of the data to Richmond and Wandsworth Councils. The team confirmed an annual subscription to the datasets and the Acorn Profiler analysis tool. CACI ran virtual training sessions for council users to build awareness about the scope and potential uses of the data as well as to transfer specific skills for using the Profiler tool.
Results
The report compiled by Emily in the spring about digital exclusion used CACI’s household Acorn data to reveal groups of residents who were potentially disadvantaged, because they couldn’t connect to online services, information and support. Immediately, the councils were able to share these insights with organisations via the community engagement team, who used it as evidence in funding bids for officers to help residents connect digitally.
Emily and the team have also used Acorn postcode data to help identify homes in the boroughs that might be eligible for the Government’s Green Homes Grant, based on income indicators. The methodology and evidence helped secure over £500,000 of central government funding for each borough. This is being distributed to the least energy efficient households through a local grant scheme covering up to £10,000 of carbon emission reduction works per home.
The councils used Acorn data to understand characteristics that influence residents’ propensity to generate food waste. Emily says: “A survey was commissioned into what households in the borough are throwing away. The specialist firm that provided it had broken the findings down by Acorn type. Now that we have the dataset too, we’ve been able to explore more deeply to help us build a communications strategy to reduce food waste, targeting households that generate the most with relevant and useful guidance and encouragement.”
The objective, trusted evidence that Acorn insights provide gives the councils better insights into the needs of residents. Salman adds: “We had so many requests for the data to help our teams adapt their communications and services during the pandemic. We’re continually finding more ways to use it to serve residents better by understanding their needs and lifestyles.”
Case study
Retail Marketing Group delivers better campaign results using data, analytics and field force optimisation tools
Summary
Retail Marketing Group is a multi-award winning field sales and marketing agency specialising in consumer electronics, with insights and data to help brands better understand their customers, retailers and the marketplace.
Company size
250
Industry
Professional Service
Products used
Challenge
In the past, Retail Marketing Group faced a number of challenges. Call files were selected based on an individual’s knowledge of the market and long nights were spent wrestling with Excel and rudimentary maps to create territories and call schedules.
Retail Marketing Group needed a more efficient and accurate way of defining call files, calculating headcount, designing efficient territories and optimal call schedules. The goal was to reduce the cost of planning and running its field teams.
Solution
Retail Marketing Group uses CACI’s Retail Footprint catchment model to tell it where people shop. It uses a mix of Acorn demographic and marketing data to tell it where its targeted consumers live. This allows Retail Marketing Group to identify the best stores to visit and set the most beneficial contact strategy.
InSite FieldForce makes sure that the headcount for each project is correct and that territories are planned in an efficient way. CallSmart produces optimal call schedules and allows Retail Marketing Group to accurately estimate mileage and required overnight stays so it can budget effectively and quote clients with accuracy.
Results
Retail Marketing Group licence a number of CACI’s solutions and utilises them to plan outsourced field teams for its clients and support pitches for new business.
Having the software in-house means Retail Marketing Group can continue to accurately quote clients, improve results due to visiting more appropriate stores for each specific campaign, reduce costs through optimal routing, hire people in the right places first time resulting in reduced recruitment costs, give the field agents a sense of fairness by utilising territories at the right level and massive time savings for Retail Marketing Group’s team of analysts which uses the software.
Case study
Republic Technologies maximises ROI from its field sales team
Summary
Republic Technologies is a global consumer goods company with over 100 years of manufacturing history. In the UK, its products are sold in a multitude of retail settings including newsagents, supermarkets and convenience stores, and requires a traditional field sales force. Republic Technologies wanted to improve its operations and geographic deployment in the field to ensure it had the right people in the right place to optimise sales teams’ working patterns, growth and customer service.
Company size
100
Industry
Manufacturing
Products used
Challenge
Republic Technologies had a number of vacancies in its field sales team, but did not know the best places to recruit. Nor did Republic Technologies know whether it needed to fill all these vacancies. Could it scale the team back and still achieve its target call rate?
Republic Technologies’ territories were imbalanced, with some people working far more hours than others. The team was spending too much time driving. Republic Technologies wanted to optimise the territories to ensure that each person was working the same hours and maximise the time spent with customers.
Based on the anticipated changes to the territories, Republic Technologies wanted to provide each sales person with a plan of attack to help them get around their customers in the most efficient way.
Solution
CACI worked with Republic Technologies’ field managers to address these challenges. Using CACI’s proprietary InSite software, we started with headcount analysis and employed InSite’s travel time algorithm to understand the amount of driving the field team would have to make between calls. This helped to understand exactly how many hours the current team was working and what this would look like if the headcount changed. Based on these calculations the correct team size was established, giving Republic Technologies the confidence that it had struck the right balance.
From this optimised structure, CACI used its CallSmart route optimiser to deliver a set of efficient routes for each field sales rep.
Results
CACI’s work has allowed Republic Technologies to quantify the hidden work in a sales person’s day to truly understand the correct size of their field sales team. This ensured Republic Technologies was maximising the return on investment from this team.
The territory optimisation improved the balance of work across the team and reduced the amount of time spent driving. With this enhanced efficiency, Republic Technologies was able to focus its recruitment on better defined locations, filling vacancies more effectively in more targeted areas. Another benefit of this was a reduction in fuel bills.
The routing gave each sales person a daily sequences of visits that reduced the time they spent in the car and the time they spent planning.
Case study
Activating data for a flagship customer experience project for the RAC
Summary
The RAC provides complete peace of mind to more than 12.7 million UK personal and business members, whatever their driving needs. They’re famous for breakdown assistance, but they also provide motor insurance and a range of other services, including buying a new or used car, vehicle inspections and checks, legal services and traffic and travel information.
Company size
1,000 – 5,000
Industry
Transportation & Logistics
Services used
Products used
ResolvID
Challenge
The RAC had outgrown its relatively basic campaign tool. They needed something more flexible and efficient to transform the existing manual and time-intensive process for campaign delivery. Their on-premise SQL solution was hosted by a third-party agency. Poor access to data constrained the RAC marketing team, which needed to be more self-sufficient in campaign operations.
The RAC’s Data and CRM Strategy Leader, Ian Ruffle, says: “Because the legacy technology wasn’t efficient, it took over 48 hours to refresh the data. If it fell over, as it often did, because we were at the limits of the solution’s capability, it could take up to ten days from a customer being acquired to reflect that in the marketing solution. This was becoming a real problem.”
Solution
The RAC and CACI worked together to implement a suite of tools to transform the RAC’s marketing capabilities and to create the efficiencies and flexibility they needed. The first step was to build a single customer view (SCV) database using Snowflake. The pay-by-consumption processing function made it scalable and cost effective as well as future-proof. This gave the RAC direct access and control of their own data, which was a key requirement. Within Snowflake, CACI built a secure, accurate and compliant dataset, in line with GDPR requirements.
The database is hosted in the MS Azure cloud, and is refreshed and managed using Azure Functions, event triggers and DBT models. CACI’s resolution identity product, ResolvID, also plays a part in the solution. It’s hosted in Amazon Web Services (AWS) and consumed in real-time as event-triggered files are added into the database. This gives the RAC a complete view of each customer across multiple datasets and sources, allowing them to engage their customers in a more holistic way.
CACI implemented Adobe Campaign, Target and Analytics. For the campaign implementation, the team created 42 different tables and two different data structures – one for the B2C side of RAC’s business and one for the B2B side. Then, the RAC and CACI worked together to migrate all their existing campaigns from their legacy solution into the new Adobe Campaign instance, automating everywhere that was possible.
Adobe Triggers mean that web-based events from the customer can feed through into Adobe Campaign in real time. The RAC are using this for their enhanced abandoned baskets campaign. Communication can be triggered instantly, catching customers at a key point in the purchase lifecycle.
With Adobe Target, customer journeys can be personalised throughout the RAC’s website. Now, when a customer lands on the home page, they see personalised content based on interaction they’ve had with the brand before and products that they have or have not purchased.
Results
CACI’s team worked closely with the RAC design team to create them an on-brand template within the CACI Email Studio application. This reduced their previous dependency on third party creative agencies. Now, the RAC team is empowered to control and to create their own emails, without needing an HTML skillset. Email Studio delivers confidence in the usability and the rendering of emails when they land in the customer’s inbox, making sure it’s a positive experience throughout.
Ian Ruffle quantifies the value of the transformation: “Our marketing activation project has delivered a seven-fold improvement in data latency. We’re getting a reliable daily build of the core tables, plus many tables maintained in real time or via hourly batch processes, to meet the various trigger needs of the business.
“75% of the campaigns in the new solution are fully automated. We’re in the process of embedding this for newer campaigns. This gives our teams a huge amount more time to think about how to optimise the campaign and get the best ROI. At the roadside, when customers aren’t sure where their patrol was, they phone us. We’ve seen a 6% reduction in these calls, which is huge for us. It’s a massive cost saving and a much better customer experience, to be kept fully informed”
Case study
Principality Building Society launched a new proposition to a new customer segment with Fresco
Summary
Principality Building Society developed a new highly focused proposition using Fresco’s insight on consumer behaviour and needs, aimed at the rising metropolitans segment. The targeted campaign produced triple the expected uptake of its innovative First Home Steps app.
Company size
1,000
Industry
Financial
Products used
Challenge
Principality’s portfolio and propositions teams have been working together to define and understand new target customer segments and design services and products to meet their needs. With a loyal and long-standing customer base, the team wanted to find a way to engage with younger customers nearer the start of their savings journey.
Principality has always used data to support planning and risk assessment and to measure performance. Principality has evolved the use of demographic, lifestyle and market data from CACI to further refine its customer and market insights. Using CACI’s Fresco segmentation was an obvious choice to support the project. Fresco describes individuals in terms of their financial product holdings, attitudes, life stage, affluence and digital behaviour. Principality wanted to differentiate through propositions with better customer type information.
Solution
Very often, insight is siloed within teams. Data is purchased and used for specific projects and activities. For the First Home Steps proposition, Principality shared insight across all the teams and individuals involved in planning and delivering the campaign.
CACI presented data insight to a multi-functional Principality team, showing how it could help to refine different aspects of the proposition and supporting the communication campaign. The data was used from the start, informing every aspect of proposition development. Principality combined CACI’s Fresco insight with its own research into first time buyers to produce a robust and differentiated evidence base that informed every First Home Steps decision.
The Fresco data helped build a picture of the target group and to understand their needs, in the context of how they live and work and the challenges they face in saving and planning. First Home Steps addresses the rising metropolitan segment, aiming to appeal to those looking to the future and saving to buy their first property.
The Fresco insight helped Principality’s team understand exactly how to reach the people it had identified, showing geographic areas where there was a high proportion of rising metropolitan consumer households. This supported targeting of ads and resources.
Results
The proposition team launched the First Home Steps campaign to educate and support younger adults who have reached the stage of wanting to buy a house, so they can be confident in their ability to manage their finances and buying decisions.
Promoted and supported in-branch, First Home Steps offers ‘workouts’ to get homebuying hopefuls financially and practically fit to obtain a mortgage and buy their first home. Resources include a borrowing calculator, a budget planner, house prices guide and savings tips. It’s all brought together in the First Home Steps app, a free pocket guide to the house-buying process. Principality hopes to motivate users to open a First Home Steps savings account, to save towards a mortgage deposit.
“We launched in branch and the campaign exceeded targets, especially for people downloading the app, with triple the numbers expected. From the first phase of the campaign the insight basis has given us great confidence for the next stage.”
Susan David, Propositions Manager, Principality Building Society
Sharing the data insight with colleagues from all parts of the business has not only created a stronger proposition, it has driven interest and positive support from branch colleagues who talk to branch visitors about their finances. They have been advocates for the app, able to talk knowledgeably and empathetically with branch visitors who might benefit, armed with a clear understanding of their likely needs and attitudes.
Principality has a mature approach to data, using a range of sources intelligently and collaboratively. They use their budget smartly, ensuring that they make full and focused use of the insight sources they subscribe to. CACI’s resources and services are key tools that help them retain loyal customers and to innovate. As well as delivering proposition insight, Fresco helps Principality understand branch footfall and customer profiles. Weekly flow information from CACI’s Retail Finance Benchmarking Mortgages and Savings provides the market context.
