Case Study – City of Boroondara

Business Overview

The City of Boroondara is a metropolitan council representing more than 165,000 people in the inner-eastern suburbs of Melbourne. As one of the larger municipalities in Victoria, the City of Boroondara council is responsible for the constituents of Balwyn, Canterbury, Kew, Camberwell, Hawthorn, Ashburton and surrounding suburbs.

In addition to the residents of Boroondara, the council also represents the workers, students and visitors who frequent the area. The council provides a comprehensive range of services and performs a variety of critical functions and roles that facilitate and foster a safe, vibrant and enjoyable standard of living within the community. Some of the fundamental services that the City of Boroondara provides include: building and planning permits, youth programs, waste and environmental management, aged and disability services and a number of cultural programs.

Challenges

In 2008, the City of Boroondara recognised that a new and improved email system for which the organisation could operate, was needed. In order for the council to continually develop and further enhance its service offerings and performance, it was imperative that a stable and more integrable platform be implemented. “Previously, we had to have special modules created so that Lotus Notes could properly integrate with everything”, said Lesley Milburn, IT Manager, City of Boroondara.

“Basically, the push for us was to get to a stage where we had an application that could carry the messaging services for mail without having to have a special module made.” For an organisation like the City of Boroondara, where performance is determined and defined by the satisfaction levels of constituents, it’s vital that the systems and platforms in place are able to progress and develop in order to meet the ever-changing needs of the community.

The need to create new modules that were functional with Lotus Notes whenever a new addition or change to the systems was implemented, was not only time consuming, but costly too. “We really just needed something that was much more efficient and easier to use, and something that fitted in with industry standards”, said Milburn. After reviewing potential solutions and consulting the relevant technicians, Lesley put forward a recommendation to the executive.

Thomas Duryea Solution

The overarching business requirements that were crucial to the executive’s approval were largely influenced by how easily the organisation was going to be able to adjust and manage the change.

“Due to the fact that the whole business was going to have to go through a significant change that would affect all the staff and take some getting use to, it was integral that the transition process was as smooth as possible”, said Milburn. The City of Boroondara had previously used Thomas Duryea on a number of other successful projects thus making the decision-making process considerably easy and straightforward. “We needed to get experts who knew exactly what they were doing, that were customer focussed and that were efficient in their processes. Thomas Duryea’s reputation in the market is that they have a good, strong, technical arm and that they can always be called on for high-end expertise.”

The City of Boroondara looked at other councils where Thomas Duryea had provided the same solution and saw the obvious advantages that they were now experiencing. “The advantages are that there is now a smoother integration process with whatever we use”, said Milburn.

Although the size of the project meant that all the staff would have to adapt to the new system, Thomas Duryea was able to ensure that the transition was seamless. “We have over 1000 staff and more than 700 of those are full time, so the change process was quite a large and involved one.” In conjunction with Thomas Duryea, the council organised for all staff to be properly trained with the new system. “We arranged regular training sessions with everybody so that all staff members knew how everything worked and were completely comfortable in using the new system.” Thomas Duryea was able to provide the new solution in less than 3 months without having any negative impact on the organisation’s operational abilities.

“It was very good and amazingly everything just went like clockwork.” said Milburn.

Summary

The City of Boroondara needed an email system that could easily integrate with new modules and systems and that would support the organisation’s core visions and responsibilities and allow them to represent their constituents as best as possible. Having worked with Thomas Duryea on a range of other projects and after seeing the results that other councils were experiencing from Thomas Duryea’s solution, it was an easy decision when the time came to choose the solution provider.

“We had to have someone who knew enough about Outlook and Thomas Duryea had several people with that skill set and we already knew they were a highly professional organisation.”

Thomas Duryea’s strong reputation within the industry and proven track record ensured the entire solution occurred with minimal disruption to the business and its operations. The ongoing support that Thomas Duryea has provided the City of Boroondara has made sure that the relationship is a long term one. “We’ve got a good relationship with Thomas Duryea, so if we ever did have any issue they would immediately say ‘look, what can be you do to fix this?’, which is always comforting”, said Milburn. “They are very receptive to anything that we say and likewise we are very responsive to anything they suggest or put forward.”