Future Proofing Our Business Systems
The City of Victor Harbor is in the process of replacing its current corporate systems to help achieve cost savings, process efficiencies and a superior customer experience.
The current corporate system has been in use for more than 20 years and no longer meets the needs of the organisation.
It is the corporate software system that Council uses to manage its day-to-day business activities such as finance, human resources, payroll, procurement, compliance, property and rates, records management, customer request and asset management.
Background
A significant amount of scoping and planning work was undertaken during 2020/21 financial year to inform the future direction of the project. This included a comprehensive review of the current system against the needs of the organisation now and into the future, an audit of the current technology structure and the creation of a project team for the implementation of the new corporate system.
On Monday, 12 July 2021, Council committed to undertake a full review and replacement of the current corporate system. The focus of the Corporate System Replacement Project is the reengineering of the Council’s corporate system with an emphasis on leveraging technology to become more customer and information centric to effectively deliver on the 2030 Community Plan.
Project goals
Goals connected to this project include:
- Improve the customer experience by reducing response times, better information and efficient streamlined eServices;
- Establishing a ‘single source of truth’;
- Improved efficiency, productivity, compliance and risk management;
- Providing mobility, flexibility and an integrated solution;
- Increased organisational capacity; and
- A modern technological solution to support the achievement of Council’s Community Plan strategic goals and aspirations.
This project will be Council’s largest information technology project to-date, and its largest operational change.
Project team
Following the endorsement by Council to review and replace the current corporate system, a Project Assurance Group (PAG) was formed. The PAG provided a critical role on the project, being responsible for overall business and technical review and assessment of all project deliverables on behalf of the steering committee and the organisation.
In April 2022, the project steering committee entered into a contract with TechnologyOne as a OneCouncil solution customer. OneCouncil is a Software as a Solution (SaaS) platform. Further to this, Council also entered into an agreement with Data#3 in March 2022 to configure and migrate Microsoft 365, Exchange Online and OneDrive for Business.
To facilitate the implementation of the new corporate system, recruitment for the project team was undertaken for the following positions:
- ICT Project Manager
- Business Analyst (Organisational Change Management)
- Business Analyst (IT / Hardware)
- Data Migration Officer
- Change Manager
Project timeline
The project is designed in five stages to implement the new corporate system in a timely, efficient, and successful manner.
Stage | Milestone | Expected completion date | |
1 | Corporate Project Planning and Preparation | Recruitment process completed for Transformation (project) Team. Communication Plan completed. Corporate System Project Plan and OneCouncil Project Plan commenced. | May 2022 and ongoing for the life of the project |
2 | Microsoft 365 Project | Microsoft Exchange Online migration completed and Office 365 training commenced. | August 2022 |
3 | OneCouncil – Release 1 | Finance, Asset Management, Procurement, Human Resources and Payroll, Customer Service Requests, Bookable. | July 2023 |
4 | OneCouncil – Release 2 | Enterprise Content Management, Property and Rating, Compliance, Recruitment, Talent and Succession, Enterprise Budgeting, DXP Meetings, Performance Planning, Bookable, Project Lifecycle Management, Strategic Asset Management, Inventory. | Proposed - December 2024 |
5 | Project Evaluation | Final training, implementation valuation of the project. | Proposed - December 2024 |
Project budget
The budget allocated towards this project in the 2023/24 financial year is $735,000 capital expenditure and $1,485,200 operating expenditure.
More information
Further updates on this project will be provided on this webpage as the project progresses.