City of Newcastle

City of Newcastle understood that to maximise efficiency, they needed to eliminate the burden of manual data entry and automate time-consuming processes. By moving Payroll to CiA, it has enabled the Council to leverage automated workflows, mobile functionality and self-service capabilities as well as digitise timesheets.

“It used to take our Payroll team two weeks to manually input the data from all the paper-based timesheets. Then there are particular times of the year when things like a payrise comes in or leave loadings need to be paid and that’s extra processing that needs to happen. It was a highly stressful environment, and the data entry level was so high which obviously has an impact on the team” Mr Clarke said.

“Now timesheets are all digital. I’d say around 80% of that manual repetitive data entry work will disappear, meaning our team will be able to pivot to do more value-adding work.”

Moving to digital timesheets has also improved staff and leader efficiency by automating time-consuming approval processes, minimising administration with simplified payroll accounting, reducing duplication errors and enabling remote working with mobile functionality.

“The majority of our office-based staff are working flexibly now, so you need the systems and tools to allow that and with CiA, you don't have to be plugged into the office to be able to do your job,” Mr Clarke said.

“It's much more flexible for everybody, including our outdoor workers, because people can use their own devices to complete timesheets at their own leisure rather than having to find a bit of paper, fill it out and physically return it to the correct people to get paid.”

All timesheet data now lives in one place, giving managers full visibility into their day-to-day operational costs and a real-time view of hours spent against work performed, making it easy to accurately allocate costs.

“The data in the system is legible, it's consistent, it's easier to read, interpret, approve, and then you've obviously got all the dashboard visibility, which means you can look at trends, you can look across your team which we just simply weren’t able to do with paper-based timesheets,” Mr Clarke said.

In the process of migrating Supply Chain to CiA, City of Newcastle hope to realise the benefits of moving away from paper-based Accounts Payable processes to automated workflows for invoice processing and supplier payments. City of Newcastle is also looking forward to gaining improved insight into supplier transactions through embedded analytics and real-time access to accurate financial records.

“I don't think we've fully unpacked the potential of that yet. We're just at the starting point in our journey. It's a massively paper and time-based process and we'll see greater visibility and effectiveness across the organisation, simpler processes, and data that's hidden that we'll be able to tap into and use,” said Mr Clarke.

It’s not just staff who will benefit.

City of Newcastle estimates they will save 6.5 trees per year by moving from paper-based to electronic timesheets, a key steppingstone in helping them to reach their sustainability goals.

“We estimate that we’ll save about 12 tons of paper a year by moving to automated Accounts Payable, and one billion litres of water through the manufacture of the paper,” Ms Lopez said.

City of Newcastle will continue to migrate their TechnologyOne products to CiA throughout 2023 and 2024 as well as looking into implementing TechnologyOne’s digital experience technology DXP Local Government.

“We're very excited and pleased with the progress we have made and we'll just keep kicking more goals over the next 18 months or so,” Mr Clarke said.

By migrating to TechnologyOne’s CiA platform, City of Newcastle is improving business efficiencies, making jobs simpler for staff, becoming a more sustainable local government and setting themselves up for the future.