Published on the 23/10/2015 | Written by Beverley Head

A review of 139 NSW councils by the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal has found only 52 to be “Fit for the future” leaving many facing amalgamations and transformations…

As part of that it’s likely that many councils will be forced to overhaul their processes, which according to Auckland based software company Promapp, could be streamlined using its platform.

Councils already make up a chunk of Promapp’s 300 plus customer base, according to founder and CEO Ivan Seselj. A recent survey of more than 620 organisations in Australia, New Zealand and the US, carried out at Promapp’s behest, found that public sector organisations were reporting greater organisational benefits from the use of business process management systems than their private sector counterparts.

According to the survey, 82 percent of public sector organisations said that business process management had improved staff efficiency compared to 72 percent of private sector respondents. Public sector users also reported a greater benefit in terms of improving customer satisfaction and reductions in training time and costs than private companies.

Carole Todd, director of process improvement at Liverpool City Council – which is one of the NSW organisations now facing the prospect of amalgamation – said that the council had recouped in one year what it spent on deploying Promapp and had been able to visually document all processes in five months.

She said that if forced to amalgamate, a tool like Promapp could help councils review and revise their processes.

Having worked in Auckland when the number of councils collapsed from eight to one, Todd said that there had been challenges to navigate the 38 different IT systems which were being used for different processes. She said that while there had been an opportunity to standardise onto process best practice from across the councils, that had not been possible using “One dimensional Visio maps.”

Seselj said that he had worked at Auckland City Council in the past and had used it as a focus group to help develop the Promapp product, but that the Council never bought it.

Todd said that by using business process management to map and optimise processes it would then be possible to ensure that IT platforms were tweaked to support the process – rather than the process being shoehorned into position by a rigid IT system.

“We are slaves to technology. We use Technology One and Pathway,” she said, adding that sometimes attempting to get the IT platforms to support a process was like “trying to plait fog.”

“They turn up and charge you $5,000 a day and give you a solution that you don’ want; they give you a solution that fits their model.

“This (Promapp) is a tool that enables change management,” she said.

And if NSW Premier Mike Baird gets his way there will be a lot of change management ahead for the State’s councils.