Central cremation service availability portal launched

The Deceased Management Advisory Group (DMAG), of which SAIF is a leading member, produced a Lessons Learned Report following the first wave of the pandemic. It contained a number of recommendations, including that:

A UK wide central cremation service availability portal is developed, and its adoption encouraged.

This has now been made available and it is believed that a central portal will deliver two key benefits for the sector during the pandemic, firstly funeral directors will have access to the booking diaries of all those crematoria who adopt the portal and secondly it will provide DMAG and Governments with the ability to see where there are increasing capacity issues.

For the central portal to deliver these benefits it is necessary for funeral directors to only make their cremation bookings on the central portal, and not directly with the crematorium. The crematorium will be advised electronically that the bookings have been requested and they can then enter them into their own system in the same way that they do now.

If a funeral director, or any person arranging a funeral, does not have access to a computer, they can still ring the crematorium, who can then make the booking for them via the portal.

After completing the online registration and setup of your organisation the ongoing process is straightforward.

For crematoria:

 1.  Receive email notification of booking request
 2.  Logon to byondcloud
 3.  Review the booking request
 4.  Approve the booking request
 5.  Enter booking onto own system
 6.  byondcloud sends confirmation of booked appointment to funeral director.

For funeral directors:

 1.  Logon to byondcloud
 2.  Create a new booking, providing details as required by the crematorium, typically;
    *   Deceased surname
    *   Deceased given name
    *   Select date & booking slot
 3.  Submit booking request
 4.  Receive email confirmation of booking request.
Each crematorium continues to use their current software and existing methods for administration and registration of cremations.

Further information and registration details can be found here.