User-Centric Bureaucracy – Hats Off to Companies House

With my Company Secretary hat on, I’ve just returned from a Companies House seminar to raise awareness on the final batch of changes which will be enacted by the Companies Act 2006 when it comes into effect on 1st October 2009.  A pretty dry subject, but I take my (Company Secretary’s) hat off to Companies House – the delivery was first class.

Companies House is an organisation with its own bureaucratic challenges.  Its UK HQ in Cardiff contains 30 miles of shelving for paper-based records; it incorporates 4,000 new companies per week; and it takes them 24 hours to open the mail each day, such are the volumes they receive.

All of my recent dealings with Companies House have been nothing less than efficient, professional and helpful.  Despite the operational challenges they clearly face, there is a clear determination in all that they do to focus their activities around the needs of the end user.  I offer a few examples:

WebFiling

The WebFiling service is a revelation.  All companies have a statutory obligation to file certain documents such as Annual Accounts and Annual Returns with Companies House. 

Once upon a time this was a slow and painful process.  The Annual Return form is 28 pages long; it could take well over an hour to complete; even once you’d sent it in it could take up to 10 days for Companies House to accept the form.  Even then there was a risk of rejection because of a minor error (last year 130,000 returns were rejected because the sender had forgotten to sign the form). 

With the WebFiling Service, it took me less than half an hour to complete two Annual Returns.  The forms were pre-populated, validated for errors prior to submission and I had acceptance confirmed within 20 minutes.

New Forms

Until now, Companies House forms had pretty inpenetrable names and reference numbers.  A 288a form for this, a 288b form for that a 363a form for the next thing.  Anyone who has ever dealt with HMRC will know what I mean. 

Well, Companies House is changing all that to make things more intelligible for its customers.  It’s introducing a series of new prefixes for its forms.  So, now if you’re looking to notify Companies House of a new Appointment, you look for an AP form; if you’re looking to notify a Termination, you look for a TM form.

It’s not rocket science.  Its a simple yet highly effective change which will help the thousands of users who have to interact with Companies House.

Companies Act Publicity & Planning

Companies House is pulling all the stops out to keep companies informed about the changes which the Companies Act will bring.  There are a series of nationwide seminars, copious amounts of information leaflets, mailshots planned to the registered address of every company in Britain, a new web site with an RSS feed.

To meet the anticipated demand for the changes which the final implementation of the Act will effect, a huge training program has been laid on for staff, and all staff leave has been cancelled for the 2 weeks around 1st October.

Helpdesk

This is serviced by 60 fully trained staff, and I can testify to the efficiency of it.

Last week I called with a query in relation to the filing of Company Net’s Annual Return.  The phone was answered within 2 rings.  There was no automated triage system. The lady who picked up provided me with a clear answer to my question without having to pass me from pillar to post, and 2 minutes after picking up the phone I was done. 

And no premium rate phone numbers in operation here - the call was charged at local rates.

It’s easy to be critical when things don’t go right, so credit where its due when things do work out.  When it comes to servicing the needs of its users I can think of numerous bureaucratic organisations – in both the public and private sectors - who could take a leaf from the Companies House book.

Plain English or Plain Crazy?

The Local Government Association’s push to outlaw certain words and phrases begs more questions than it answers, and will cause problems for suppliers.

Today, the Local Government Association published a list of 200 words which, it says, should not be used by Local Councils.  You can view the full list at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7949077.stm.

The LGA’s intention is perfectly understandable; they want to promote clear communication through the use of plain English.  After all, I don’t think there are many people who want phrases such as “Predictors of Beaconicity” trotted out, and less still who would have the vaguest clue what it actually means.

But from my company’s perspective (Company Net), as a supplier of software services to organisations which include Local Councils, the LGA’s latest mandate presents more than a few problems.   For a start, phrases such as “functionality”, “scoping”, “protocols”, “transactional”, “parameter” and “toolkit” are all outlawed, all of which are common parlance within the software development fraternity. 

In an operational sense (an area close to my heart), other phrases are on the hit-list.  I’m not allowed to talk about “resource allocation” any longer; the word “framework” is also banished.  But why stop there?  Why not ban methodologies as well?  “Outputs” are forbidden, but somewhat bizarrely, “inputs” are not.  Perhaps this suggests that that there was no “outcome” (another word for the scrap-heap), because the inputs were never “actioned” (and another).  No doubt the participants were too busy playing ‘buzzword bingo’ instead of getting on with the task in hand.

Buzzword Bingo

Perhaps we should be keeping such ‘geek-speak’ words and phrases to ourselves, and not unleashing them on the customer.  Personally, I have no problem with this.

However, where it becomes particularly problematic is in the conventional language of software delivery projects which is required in the “interface” (whoops, there’s another word on the hit-list) between the software consultancy and customer.  “Single point of contact” is now forbidden.  Show me a customer who doesn’t want a single point of contact?  It just doesn’t make sense.

Company Net likes to establish “partnerships” with its customers.  We strive to work through “collaboration”, to have “dialogue” with our customers.  All these words are forbidden.  In working through the “engagement” (another no-no), we have discussions about “priorities”, and we often seek to develop the software by “iterations”.  Well, not any more we don’t; not when we’re working with Local Government.

And heaven forbid, what happens when we may (very occasionally) deviate from plan?  The word “slippage” has been banned; its suggested replacement being “delay”.  Slippage is a far more evocative word.  It implies a significant element of the accidental or unintended, which in a project delivery sense is usually the case.  No-one intends to be late; whereas delays can be intentional.

Finally, there’s the issue of what we call our Local Government customers.  “Customers” is no longer an option; and “Clients” is a no-go area too.  Perhaps we should refer to our customers as “they who pay the bill” – in an effort to follow the Germanic model of concatenating several words within a single word to convey a precise and very definite meaning.  The often-referenced example of this method is the German word for ‘matchbox’ – ‘Streichholzschaechtelchen’.  This is derived from ‘Streich’ meaning rubbing, ‘holz’ meaning wood, ‘Schaechtel’ meaning box, and ‘chen’ meaning little.  But, on second thoughts, given that most non-German speakers struggle to even voice this word, perhaps this isn’t such a great idea.  Language needs to be communicable as well as understandable.

Aside from the linguistic considerations, there is also the matter of freedom of speech.  Who are the LGA to tell us what we can and can’t say? 

No-one wants to be stuck in a meeting where gobbledegook is the (dare I say it?) linguafranca.   But at the end of the day, it all comes down to semantics; the purpose of language is to make yourself understood.  If you are not understood, your language has failed you. 

With a few exceptions (does anyone know what “coterminosity” actually means, and why use “promulgate” when declare will suffice?), there’s absolutely nothing wrong with using most of the words on LGA’s banned list.  The proviso is that these should be used appropriately, and used to convey meaning and understanding with the bare minimum of extraneous explanation.  A “Level Playing Field” is a fantastic, evocative phrase which should be celebrated, not outlawed.  In three short words, it promotes instant understanding.  So, why use a paragraph when 3 words will suffice?  It’s all about the speaker and the listener being on the same wavelength.  And, for now, “wavelength” is a word which we are all free to use.