'Change Champions' lead Noosa Shire Council into the future

Noosa Shire Council is investing in its workforce, appointing its first ‘Change Champions’ to help strengthen its internal digital culture and drive adoption of modern capabilities across its 500-strong team.

The new initiative follows the council’s recent implementation of TechnologyOne’s Field App, enabling its outdoor workforce to manage tasks from any device in any environment regardless of network connectivity. While the solution enhanced efficiencies among early adopters, many employees showed signs of resistance to the rapid digital changes.

In his their roles as Change Champions, Noosa's Asset Systems Team has proven critical to the successful adoption of new initiatives starting with TechnologyOne’s Project Lifecycle Management (PLM). The software helps council better identify, control, manage, track, report and analyse program, portfolio and project performance.

With PLM, the council is now taking advantage of organisation-wide transparency that saves significant time and resources. Manual tasks have been automated, including project approvals based on the HR structure and real-time reports, while emails sent to/from project leads via the system create an auditable trail in one place.

Noosa Shire Council Coordinator Asset Systems, Devon Wilson, said: “The biggest issue we face when bringing in a new solution is change management. It doesn’t matter how intuitive the new technology is, doing something different will always be perceived as harder than sticking with the original process. This reluctance is not unique to our industry; digital transformation is inherently complex.

“The newly created roles have been essential in securing workforce-wide acceptance of the PLM implementation, ensuring everyone feels supported in the creation and processing of projects. Partnering with TechnologyOne has long provided us with seamless technological rollouts and future-proof capabilities, but only by prioritising the digital culture among our team can the significant benefits available truly be realised.”

Loretta Libke, TechnologyOne’s local government expert, said: “Noosa’s ability to respond to its workforce’s needs with an extra layer of guidance and support has paid dividends, reinforcing its commitment to delivering vital services as efficiently as possible. Only by using solutions properly will councils be able to perform at their optimum level for the benefit of the whole community, and the team’s buy-in is critical to that success.

“Our Power of One philosophy sees us build, market, sell, implement, support and run our SaaS ERP. As opposed to relying on third-party integrators, we work directly with customers because while we bring the technology and industry expertise, we know people like the internal teams know the council inside out. This direct relationship with the customer also creates a significant IP engine, our consulting teams then feed back into our R&D team to continuously improve our products and processes, and that’s incredible powerful for customers.”