Murray River runs to digital transformation

17 November 2020 – Murray River Council in the Riverina region of New South Wales will deliver improved services to its community, operate more efficiently and reduce its ongoing investment in computer hardware following a five-year deal with Australian enterprise software provider TechnologyOne.

The council’s information technology systems will undergo a significant overhaul, including the transition from an on-premise environment to a modern, integrated and secure cloud-based platform utilising TechnologyOne’s OneCouncil SaaS solution.

According to Murray River Council CEO Des Bilske, COVID-19 has presented many challenges for local governments, especially those near State borders. The area’s largest town Moama is separated from the Victorian town of Echuca by the Murray River, and this has created unique challenges for local residents, businesses and council staff during lockdowns.

“While Murray River Council was aware of the shortcomings of its incumbent IT systems well before the pandemic hit, the pressure of maintaining council services while a majority of its workforce was under lockdown in April only served to highlight the need for a modern cloud-based system,” Mr Bilske said.

“Our digital transformation will happen in two stages with the systems responsible for finance, budgeting, asset management, supply chain management, human resources and payroll expected to go live in early 2021, followed by property and ratings and electronic document management later next year.

“We chose TechnologyOne for a number of reasons. They have a history of working with local governments stretching back 30 years – including some of our neighbouring councils who they have also helped make the transition.

“We’re looking to forward to turning a new page when we go live early next year,” he said.

According to TechnologyOne’s CEO Ed Chung, Murray River Council’s challenges are common to many local governments.

“We work with hundreds of councils across Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom and what’s surprising is that, while they all support unique and diverse communities in various parts of the globe their technology challenges are often quite similar.

“They want the best for their community, they want the best for their employees, and they want to deliver services in the most efficient way possible. But they are often budget constrained, since their funding comes direct from their community, and dealing with outdated legacy systems that are actually costing them time and money.”

“In the last few years we’ve helped many, many councils build a platform for the future, get their people back to doing value-add work that they enjoy, and release their budgets from the shackles of having to own and manage rooms of IT equipment by moving to SaaS,” Mr Chung said.