Southern Downs Regional Council invests more into community assets

Tuesday, 31 October 2023 - Southern Downs Regional Council, in Queensland’s Darling Downs, will implement TechnologyOne’s Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) solution to bolster the management of its community assets, from water infrastructure to roads and community parklands.

The solution will give Council a holistic view of its assets helping it meet its capital objectives on time and on budget while allowing field teams to manage the work completion process anywhere, any time and on any device.

The new project will follow TechnologyOne’s unique Solution-as-a-Service philosophy (also known as SaaS Plus) removing the need for traditional, complex, long, risky implementations. Instead of the traditional upfront implementation cost, Council will enjoy the simplicity of a single annual fee to implement, operate, and support the software and accelerated implementation. SaaS Plus will provide Council with pre-configured EAM processes to deliver improved effectiveness and efficiency as it moves away from disparate asset management systems.

Dave Burges, CEO for Southern Downs Regional Council, which serves a population of approximately 37,000 across 7,000 square kilometres, said the solution would take Council’s asset management to a whole new level.

“Council has a diverse range of assets, including water and sewerage treatment plants, a very 3,000km-long road network, as well as parks, buildings, halls, and a lot of building infrastructure. We have a great challenge in terms of managing that level of asset base with a patched-up solution that includes complicated integrations and lacks support. TechnologyOne’s EAM will consolidate disparate asset management systems and allow us to focus on delivering the data, rather than configuring those systems,” Mr Burges said.

“We don’t have the technical expertise in-house to implement a project of this scale, which is why we’re relying on SaaS Plus. TechnologyOne will take on much of the traditional implementation risk. The TechnologyOne project team have a great awareness of the data structures that sit behind it and how they can transport that into the SaaS Plus Enterprise Asset Management.”

While streamlined back-end solutions will help Council’s productivity, residents and visitors will also reap the benefits. Access to asset data anywhere, anytime and from any device means field workers can log requests while out in the community, which in turn will allow Council to attend to issues faster.

“One aspect we’re really excited to leverage is the mobility Field App. We’ll be able to gain efficiency through our staff being able to perform data capture and asset inspections in the field,” said Mr Burges.

“It will allow Council staff to make informed decisions so we can respond to issues on the ground in a timely manner, which overall is a greater retainer on investment for the community.”

TechnologyOne’s CEO, Ed Chung, said that SaaS Plus was changing the game for our customers and ERP implementations as a whole.

“When it comes to SaaS implementations, unfortunately, our industry continues to be burdened by a model in which organisations must often bring in implementation partners and other third-party consultants to deliver these innovations, an impost that can add up to seven times the cost of the software, not to mention project delays,” Mr Chung said.

“SaaS Plus is a world first, turning the entire solution into a service and improving time to value for our customers. Our aim with this offering was to remove risk and burden for our customers, like Southern Downs Regional Council, so they can focus on what really matters: their residents and visitors.”