Melton Shire Council has inked a three-year, $750,000 software deal to overcome bottlenecks in the local government authority's document handling processes.
The council, which is located 30 kilometres west of Melbourne and has 83,000 residents, has selected Avand's Data Works for its foray into information management.
Melton's corporate services director Kelvin Tory said the project will improve document handling processes including difficulties in accessing data, capturing and sharing corporate information, tracking requests throughout their lifecycle as well as the reporting of service levels.
"As a rapidly growing council we're facing challenges on different fronts when it comes to handling, sharing and tracking service requests and correspondence from both residents and suppliers," Tory said.
"In addition to helping us better handle correspondence, we also wanted a system that gives us seamless, organization-wide workflow and CRM functionality so we can easily manage a customer request from initiation to completion.
"It also had to be flexible, secure, integrate with our core computer systems, and help us meet our state archives compliance obligations while remaining easy enough for our 350 staff to use."
Tory said the council was impressed by the high level of participation of Avand's product and management teams during the selection process.
He said DataWorks will also integrate seamlessly with its property, payroll, names, and rates database as well as the Geographic Information System (GIS).
"In all likelihood, replace our current request system and use DataWorks' WebForms and workflows to manage all of our customer service requests," Tory said.
"We are also hoping to use the new software to log requests over the Internet to provide our customers easier access to council services, perform queries, search and access documents."
Avand CEO Chris Gorry said the software's electronic content management functionality eliminates the bottlenecks most Australian organizations face when managing hard copy documents.
"Take for example the relatively common task of sharing hardcopy documents between offices. In the past it took days for documents to be delivered from one office to another, and from one manager to the next," Gorry said.
"DataWorks eliminates this latency by scanning and storing documents at source, so customer requests are completed quicker, applications are actioned quicker, and customer satisfaction is improved as a result."
System implementation has commenced and DataWorks will go live later this year.
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