City of Darebin council in the northern suburbs of Melbourne is implementing business process management software to enhance the council’s focus on improved frontline customer service.

The City of Darebin has a population of more than 150,000. The council’s full-time employees are responsible for providing a broad range of services to the community, including street lighting and signage, waste collection, maintenance of parks and sporting facilities.

The move follows a comprehensive review by the council of customer service team processes as part of a customer service model review to ensure that policies and procedures relevant to customer queries are close at hand. At the same time, the council wants to provide an easy and fast way for staff to access a central repository of everyday processes.

The cloud-based software will enable the organisation to map, review and improve processes on an ongoing basis, providing a faster, smarter way to deliver a range of appropriate and well-planned services.

Coordinator of council planning and performance, civic governance and performance Jim Barrett at the City of Darebin said: “The software will assist in supporting the council’s strategic framework for planning and document integration. At the same time, it will play a pivotal role in enabling us to maintain a high level of governance across the entire organisation.

“These processes involve many forms and include applications such as planning permits and waste bin replacements, which individually can be complex procedures and involve several departments within the council.”

It will also enable the council to measure and demonstrate process efficiencies following rate capping.

“We came across the Promapp system through our council colleagues in the local government sector and also appreciated the benefit of access to its local government shared process library that will enable us to share knowledge and learn from the experience of other councils throughout Australia and New Zealand,” said Mr Barrett.

The cloud-based process library includes over 2,500 processes developed and shared by councils and includes processes for activities such as building consents, resource consents, wastewater management, environmental health and environmental monitoring.

“The software will easily integrate with our existing intranet and we’ll be able to embed it ad hoc within specific processes for different policies as they are developed in the years ahead,” said Mr Barrett.

“The council plans to use lean management methodologies as part of our deployment to analyse and improve processes on an ongoing basis. The result for council residents is that they will see consistency in messaging with faster, more accurate service,” said Mr Barrett.