New Zealand's Hawkes Bay Regional Council has announced it is set to undergo significant digital transformation in partnership with enterprise Software-as-a-Service provider TechnologyOne.
The digital transformation project will focus on certain key areas, including enabling more technology driven community services.
Hawkes Bay Regional Council protects and manages the environment in one of the country's primary production and wine-producing regions, with a population of 174,000.
It is a new customer for TechnologyOne, whose enterprise software is already behind more than 30 New Zealand local government authorities.
Key spokespeople from the Council and TechnologyOne commented on the announcement.
Regional Council corporate services group manager Jessica Ellerm says the catalyst for change was running a legacy system last renewed in 2009, offering limited flexibility to grow as a platform and support decision-making.
She says, “We realised our IT infrastructure built up over time needed streamlining and updating, and we wanted a reliable partner to help us simplify that back-end and give us a more integrated system.
“We also needed to maintain compliance with complex government regulations, have better access to real-time information and work with the flexibility and resilience of operating an anytime, anywhere virtual platform.
On the decision to go with TechnologyOne, Ellerm says, “We selected TechnologyOne because of their proven OneCouncil solution and experience in local government in New Zealand. We also wanted a group of people we thought we could work with and trust.
“TechnologyOne will provide us with a modern enterprise-wide system, starting with our financial applications, to make compliance with complex government legislation much easier. This will give us better information to support decision-making.
TechnologyOne chief operating officer Stuart MacDonald says his local teams ability to deliver under pressure was demonstrated during Stage 4 COVID-19 lockdown, when New Zealand's Queenstown Lakes District Council went live with their strategic asset management model almost entirely remotely.
MacDonald says, “Hawkes Bay Regional Council is as passionate about digital transformation as we are, and were pleased to see another organisation in New Zealand choose a best of breed solution developed in this part of the world.
“With implementation starting as early as later this year, Hawkes Bay Regional Council will adopt TechnologyOnes OneCouncil SaaS solution and replace a series of legacy applications underpinning the Councils finances, budgeting, procurement operations and revenue and ratings, as well as HR and payroll.
In March, TechnologyOne launched a package of free tools for customers designed to help them weather the COVID-19 crisis. In particular, the Together As One analytics resources have proved popular, with more than 20 customers taking up the package including several local government entities.