16 November 2022 – Bass Coast Shire Council has bolstered council services by almost seven times with TechnologyOne’s OneCouncil Software as a Service (SaaS) platform to better serve its community.

Residents and visitors of Bass Coast in Victoria’s Gippsland can now interact with the council 24 hours a day, seven days a week thanks to a new, easy to navigate online customer portal available anytime, anywhere and from any device.

In addition, Bass Coast has increased the number of services offered online, from six to more than 40 and enabled for the consolidation of six IT platforms to one, creating a single ‘source of truth’ for information and better connecting employees, field workers and customers.

“The customer is at the centre of everything we do,” says Ali Wastie, Chief Executive Officer of Bass Coast Shire Council. “This digital transformation is about modernising our IT systems to help us be more effective and deliver better services to our growing community.”

“Residents can engage with the Council on any issue that is important to them, whether it’s planning, the environment, a community group, or making a rate or animal registration payment, in a way that works for their individual needs,” says Wayne Mack, General Manager of Business Transformation at Bass Coast.

Bass Coast Shire, 130 kilometres southeast of Melbourne, is one of the state’s fastest growing rural municipalities. The council supports more than 40,000 residents and 3.4 million visitors – many of whom come for the world-famous Phillip Island – each year.

Bass Coast is on the receiving end of the COVID-induced sea-change, with many residents moving to the coastal shire since the beginning of the pandemic and during Melbourne’s successive lockdowns.

But problems with its existing IT infrastructure were impacting the council’s ability to respond to such growth. It used six different software applications which were not well integrated, meaning information was often duplicated, doubted or not easily available in real time.

In addition, the systems were on premise meaning upgrades were complex and time consuming and the organisation was saddled with the cost of buying and maintaining equipment for a computer datacentre that had become an unwelcome drag on the finances.

Most importantly, the time, effort and cost involved in making changes had become a barrier to innovation. Bass Coast needed to move to a new technology platform that was both ‘fit for purpose’ today and could provide a flexible foundation for its future.

A TechnologyOne customer since 2016, the council implemented a digital transformation project that included upgrading key systems – including finance, budgeting, supply chain, asset management and request management – to the company’s OneCouncil SaaS solution.

“The upgrade allowed us to bring many different systems together and at the same time eliminate manual processes. Our teams are now doing work that benefits the community rather than pushing paper and entering the same data in multiple places,” says Mr Mack.

“We went from offering six services online to 40, covering almost every aspect of council’s operations. As a result, we’ve seen the number of customer requests coming in digitally increase from one or two a day to now closer to 80.”

“Now that the council is connected to residents through the portal there is complete visibility of resident requests, from the time a request is entered through to a crew member in the field completing the work, all using one seamless end-to-end process,” Mr Mack says.

“As well as giving a better customer experience, the new system better allows us to manage and act on those requests. Under the previous system every request would generate four separate emails to various departments. Now it’s all a single workflow,” he said.

Requests can range from inspecting drains to make sure there are no blockages that may lead to overflowing or flooding to planting trees and tending to gardens in local neighbourhoods. With the requests all in one place, accessible anywhere, anytime, the field team can get through more.

Bass Coast’s field teams have seen notable benefits. Moving to TechnologyOne’s OneCouncil has replaced manual timesheets for 70 staff members, who are often on the road. Now they can easily enter updates as they go, rather than at the end of a shift, and without having to go back to the office.

“We’re able to support flexible and remote working, people can work anywhere at any time, which better suits their needs. It allows our employees to focus on doing more value-add work for our customers,” says Mr Mack.

Ed Chung, Chief Executive Officer of TechnologyOne said: “We are excited to be supporting Bass Coast Shire and their exciting community growth. We know the communities our councils serve are at the centre of everything they do. By helping them make the transition to our TechnologyOne SaaS platform, we are able to support our customers in delivering simplicity and outstanding customer service for their communities.”

Media contact
Miette Lelievre
PR Advisor
M: +61 428 940 628
Miette_Lelievre@technologyonecorp.com

About TechnologyOne

TechnologyOne (ASX: TNE) is Australia’s largest enterprise Software as a Service (SaaS) company and one of Australia’s top 100 ASX-listed companies, with offices across six countries. Our enterprise SaaS solution transforms business and makes life simple for our customers by providing powerful, deeply integrated enterprise software that is incredibly easy to use. Over 1,200 leading corporations, government departments and statutory authorities are powered by our software.

Our global SaaS solution provides deep functionality for the markets we serve: local government, government, education, health and community services, asset intensive industries and financial services. For these markets we invest significant funds each year in R&D. We also take complete responsibility to market, sell, implement, support and run our solutions for our customers, which reduce time, cost and risk.

Publish date

16 Nov 2022
Contact Us Agent - TechnologyOne

Have a question?

If you would like more information, we are here to help.