We maintained Civica’s track record of operational and financial delivery during the six months to 31 March 2020, with progress across core markets and continued strategic development focused around cloud software, digital enablement and technology innovation. Notwithstanding the development of the COVID-19 pandemic at the end of the period, the Group delivered a resilient performance supported by ongoing investment in our people and products.
Following the virus outbreak, we took early steps to safeguard the health and wellbeing of our employees, customers, partners and communities around the world and to maintain business continuity. We moved quickly to enable our employees to work from home and with a strong infrastructure we continued all business activities supported by established working practices – which we augmented – and underpinned by our focus on positive health.
As a signatory to the C-19 Business Pledge, we also responded rapidly in a number of areas to make available software to support public and community services through the pandemic. Innovations included a new COVID-19 app launched in March by the Northern Ireland Department of Health and our Community Helper which allows councils to manage support for vulnerable people. We also provided updated software to deliver new legislation, for example enabling UK local government customers to quickly provide more than £1.6bn in critical grants, and supporting the first remote Parliamentary vote for the UK Government following agreement of new temporary procedures.
Developments during the period included:
- Growing to more than 5,000 employees globally
- Expansion of our team in Vadodara, India, to more than 550 employees to support our global business with software and innovation expertise as well as back office services
- New programmes under the Civica Academy to support our people, aligned to our UK Investors in People ‘Gold’ accreditation
- Building on our position as a cloud leader, with more than 3,200 customers using cloud-based solutions, and good progress with Group mobile and chatbot applications
- Launch of our North Star ‘innovation lab’ to build on our position as an innovation leader and accelerate the application of new ideas and technologies for customers
- New partnership with Fiscal Technologies to help customers improve visibility and reduce risk across finance functions via AI technology
- Strong performance following integration for our dedicated Democracy & Engagement division with large-scale programmes including support of the UK’s 2019 General Election
- Established stronger position in workforce management for the health & care sector with the integration of Warwick International and Trac Systems whose cloud offerings range from NHS recruitment to occupational health
- Acquisition of Fretwell Downing which complements our cloud strategy and our activities focused on compliance and risk management software
- Sustained focus on building social value through our employee, customer and community activities, including our partnership with Young Enterprise and our Coding for Kids initiative in Northern Ireland and raising over $10k to support the Australian bushfires response
Building on our strong market position and resilient platform, we extended use of Civica software applications with new and existing customers. We continued to expand adoption of our cloud software which is helping to deliver more efficient, flexible and secure services and a stronger foundation for future innovation. The advantage of cloud software, together with mobile applications, was prominently highlighted by the shift to home and remote working brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.
During the period we maintained momentum with new contract wins, including:
- Software agreements with Liverpool City Council, Transport for London, Places for People, Kent & Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust, Palmerston North City Council, the South Australian Office of the Training Advocate and Midway Community Care.
- New programmes for our Digital division in national and local government, including the Appeals Service for Northern Ireland and the Environment Agency
- Increased cross-sector selling of products and services within the business, including internationally such as Housing Cx software for Unison Housing and the first customers in Australia for CostMaster cloud software
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted all organisations and while this has inevitably caused some slowdown in certain areas of business, we adopted a prudent approach to manage the business cautiously through a period of continued uncertainty. Normal operations have proved resilient to date supported by the business-critical nature of our software and services.