Case Study: Colchester Borough Council achieves faster, data-driven resident services with Microsoft Power BI

Borough council launches expedited resident services from the cloud

Colchester Borough Council, which serves 192,500 residents, faced rising demand and tight budgets while relying on fragmented systems that made it hard to see a complete view of each resident. To reduce administration costs and enable more self-service options, the Council moved to Microsoft cloud technologies—most notably Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Service—and adopted Microsoft Power BI for reporting and insights.

Using Dynamics 365 Portals, Power Apps, Power Automate and SharePoint Online together with Microsoft Power BI, Colchester Borough Council built 23 self-service processes, consolidated its website on Dynamics 365, and delivered 100,000 successful web transactions since going live in May 2017; mobile access rose 8% over four years. The platform also enabled rapid, low-cost development (for example, a one-week rollout of a taxi licensing booking system) and Power BI dashboards and heat maps that provide KPIs to improve services like recycling, freeing budget to focus on vulnerable residents.

Colchester Borough Council

Leonie Rathbone

Assistant Director for Customers