Digital saves the day for a growing community.

Situated in Sydney’s West, Campbelltown City Council is home to a rapidly growing population of over 170,000 inhabitants who live, work and play across the Council’s 34 suburbs. And with the imminent opening of the new Western Sydney Airport, it’s expected even more Sydneysiders will want to move to the area.

To stay one step ahead of its residents’ ever evolving needs, the Council realised that a digital platform would best support its growing community while also enhancing accessibility to, as well as the safety and reliability of, its multiple services.

To date, the Council has used online forms for high-volume requests such as lodging requests for hard rubbish removal or to report dumping. However, with no digital processing behind the scenes to link relevant internal systems and processes with engineers in the field, Council teams relied on manual processes between systems and departments to action and follow up on requests. Customers also had to either phone or visit the Council office to find out the status of their requests. Like many City Councils, this was a bit of a ‘black box’. Inevitably, this process led to lots of waiting, several follow up calls, duplication of requests and unhappy constituents.

Sabrina Peroumal, Executive Manager, Corporate Support Systems, Campbelltown City Council, explains, “We knew our citizens wanted to engage with us digitally. But multiple touchpoints within Council – mostly paper-based – resulted in inefficiencies which frustrated citizens.”

“Like most other Councils, we have limited resources to undertake a full digital transformation, so we wanted a simple, scalable, digital solution – delivered as a service – that would allow us to improve service resolution time and deliver value quickly.”

Sabrina says, “Taking a pilot approach and moving smaller packages of services to the platform each time, has allowed us to familiarise ourselves with the platform and continue to develop the solution through each iteration. Customers, customer service, and service providers have all responded positively to their experience, which is great!” 

Priscilla Short, Deloitte’s Lead Engagement Partner and Deloitte City Services product lead, explains further. “Until the rollout, the field service teams relied on paper-based processing, which meant updates had to be entered by staff, back at the office. Without a central system to unify procedures, processes varied from team to team, making work orders difficult to track and report on. This new solution allows ‘before and after’ photos to be uploaded, which saves time and results in fewer on-site inspections. Now all the teams involved can collaborate more effectively on the task at hand and have a clear view of the entire job with notes and photos.”

With Deloitte City Services, 80 service trucks have been provided with iPads so crews can log in and see their assigned jobs for the day in real time. Images and notes are captured on-site with no re-typing or scanning required.

Real-time dashboards allow teams to see how requests are progressing. And increased efficiencies, data analysis and insight generation have saved precious time for customer relations managers.

Sabrina is very happy with the end result. “Creating a streamlined and user-friendly digital platform has allowed us to reallocate resources into more valuable areas and enhance residents’ overall satisfaction with council. And the intuitive nature of the interface has really supported the adoption by our customers, with 88% saying they would recommend lodging a request through the system. This has been a catalyst for the move to digital for the Council operations team.”