2.6 During the first three years of the contract SBS spent significantly more than planned on transforming NS&I's operations. Both NS&I and SBS underestimated the scale of the business transformation.
2.7 SBS's introduction of technology has not always had the significant impact on reducing staff numbers it expected. Imaging technology, for example, is not always reliable and can produce poor quality images which can lead to errors. SBS argues that standard application forms for products would significantly improve the use of imaging technology and NS&I and SBS are working together to address this issue. They have reduced the number of forms, both internal and external, significantly as shown in Figure 5 and they intend to make further reductions.