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City of Mitcham

The City of Mitcham has digitised 5.6 million property records, automated its property information search process and saved $120,000 per annum with TechnologyOne’s integrated Enterprise Content Management software

Case study highlights

  • Implemented Section 7 solution in 90 days
  • 140% return on investment in just two years
  • Recurring annual savings of $120,000

The Challenge

The City of Mitcham is a local government area in the foothills of southern Adelaide, South Australia, with a population of approximately 65,000.

Previously, the City of Mitcham was experiencing integration issues stemming from a multitude of software applications that weren’t linking together.

“We had hundreds of software applications and a lot of complex business processes, which were workarounds for system limitations,” said Matt Romaine, Group Manager, City of Mitcham.

“We couldn’t easily access council information on properties and had a 100 per cent error rate from manually inputting information into our systems.

“There was a lot of double handling of information, time lags and general inefficiency from outdated manual processes.”

Recognising the need for greater integration and automation, the City of Mitcham embarked on a transformational project to consolidate its existing software into one integrated enterprise solution.

The Solution

The City of Mitcham implemented TechnologyOne's  OneCouncil solution developed specifically for Local Government.

OneCouncil underpins the strategic and day-to-day operational requirements of Local Government with a single, integrated solution.

“Our goal was to improve efficiency and enhance our customer experience,” Romaine said.

“We also wanted to repurpose the human effort currently invested in manual administrative tasks, into other areas of the business.”

The Outcome

The council has digitised millions of paper-based property records into TechnologyOne’s Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software and automated its Section 7 search process end-to-end.

ECM integrates with TechnologyOne’s Property & Rating and Financials software, allowing the City of Mitcham to gain a holistic view of council-wide information.

“The online search now returns one combined PDF document per property to our customers in just seconds,” Romaine said.

“What was an initial $187,000 capital investment has delivered a recurring annual operating saving of $120,000.

“This is an example of a transformational process improvement that crosses over multiple functional areas.”

Romaine added: “None of this would be possible without TechnologyOne’s integrated enterprise solution, as the process relies on a robust property-based system.”

Group Manager
City of Mitcham

We implemented the Section 7 digital solution in just 90 days, removing the need for human effort - end to end.

Perspective

Prior to implementing ECM, the City of Mitcham was investing time and money into inefficient work processes, that were delivering sub-standard business outcomes.

Since going live, the council has transformed not only its organisation but its customer experience.

“We implemented the automated Section 7 search process in just 90 days, removing the need for human effort - end to end,” Romaine said.

“We’ve slashed customer wait times, reduced our error rate and improved our customer experience out of sight,” Romaine said.

“This wasn’t possible until we went live with TechnologyOne late last year, and the amazing effort by the project team.

“Since the implementation, there’s been a huge cultural shift in our organisation - the appetite for change and improvement has increased and people are now coming to us wanting to use TechnologyOne software in their department.”

The City of Mitcham is also looking to expand its software functionality to leverage further improvements.

“The next big thing we’re looking at doing is connecting our TechnologyOne software to our front-end website,” Romaine said.

“This will further remove double-handling of data, remove time lags, improve integration and make it easier for customers to interact with us digitally through TechnologyOne’s online portals.”

Romaine added: “Being able to automate and track our front-end services via one platform will deliver significant benefits to our organisation and community.”

Spotlight

A Section 7 search is a request that conveyancers lodge with councils so that potential property buyers know what they’re buying before they sign a contract. In response, councils have to provide a range of historical data and records, to meet their legislative requirements.

Previously, the City of Mitcham dealt with about 2000 Section 7 requests from conveyancers every year. This required the input of six staff members across four teams to search through a combination of paper and digital records, to action each request manually.

“Our previous Section 7 process took days and sometimes weeks to complete a single search request,” Romaine said.

“The process was extremely inefficient and required a lot of human effort that could be resolved through integrated software to automate the process.”

Since implementing Enterprise Content Management, the City of Mitcham has gone live with a fully-automated, end-to-end ‘Section 7’ process.

“We’ve built and deployed an automated search engine to compile all of the relevant documentation for customers.”

Romaine added: “As soon as the customer lodges an application online, the search engine compiles the final search document by looking at all of the relevant fields in ECM and returns it instantaneously to the customer via email.”

Enterprise Content Management

About City of Mitcham

The City of Mitcham is situated approximately six kilometres from Adelaide CBD and comprises  an area of 75.7 square kilometres.

City of Mitcham website

Publish date

29 May 2019

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