Published on Tuesday, 2 August 2022 at 12:19:52 PM
About the Client
The Shire of Capel is situated in Western Australia’s South West region and is home to diverse community groups and areas, from charming towns to serene seaside settlements.
As the communities within the Shire continue to grow, its vision is to create a lifestyle of choice by delivering positive social, environmental, and economic outcomes through good governance, responsive services, and quality facilities.
To ensure they are providing meaningful services to the community, the Shire of Capel equips their team with advanced technology solutions to foster greater efficiency and productivity. The Shire of Capel migrated to cloud technology using Doc Assembler to automate governance processes such as creating agendas and minutes.
The Challenge
Process improvement was a priority for the Shire of Capel as they searched for a digital solution that could facilitate collaboration and improve workplace productivity.
“We’ve been doing things manually for a long time using Word documents and liaising back and forth via emails. There was also a lack of consistency with the reports, as multiple people were using different formats without any form of templates.”
“Enabling collaboration was a key factor, looking specifically at workflows to prevent gaps in information. There have been times when a step in the approval process was skipped or managers didn’t have oversight of where things were at.”
Tahlia Stowell
Executive Assistant to CEO
Through engaging with other local governments and learning about their experience with Harbour Software, the Shire of Capel decided to implement Doc Assembler as their cloud-based agendas and minutes solution.
“What led us to Harbour Software originally was other local government recommendations. I think they’ve established quite a good reputation and they have definitely met our expectations.”
James Meakes
Manager Customer & Business Services
The Brief and Implementation
The team at Harbour Software supported the Shire of Capel to transition to cloud technology by onboarding users, setting up templates and workflows, and deploying the software to seamlessly integrate with their SharePoint system.
“The support and implementation team at Harbour Software has been amazing. They’ve been really good at explaining everything and providing advice on how to maximise value out of the software solution. They understand local government and how we function, which really helped streamline the process.”
“Having the set templates and language already embedded within the report has enabled a lot more consistency across the organisation. The workflow process has also reduced our emails by enabling multiple people to work on the document online in real-time. We're also able to provide feedback and comments within the document instead of via email.”
Tahlia Stowell
Executive Assistant to CEO
“Doc Assembler has a reliable way of templating information to deliver professional and consistent reports. Harbour Software has also provided great support with SharePoint, and they were very good at leading us through the setup and implementation,”
James Meakes
Manager Customer & Business Services
The Outcome
The Shire of Capel has experienced major benefits since partnering with Harbour Software to modernise the way they create council reports and agendas.
“The platform has supported empowerment within the team to increase ownership and accountability. We’re able to put it back to the writers, provide comments, and access versions of the report to track the adjustments.”
“Doc Assembler being an online platform enables us to work on the reports and make live edits on any device. With the extraordinary times that we’re living in now, the flexibility within organisations to be able to work from home or anywhere else is becoming more important. It’s assuring to know that our organisation will still be able to function and collaborate on reports from anywhere and without having to be in the office physically.”
Tahlia Stowell
Executive Assistant to CEO
“Council reporting used to take a team of two or three people around three days to complete but now with Doc Assembler, we’re able to generate the report within a day with only one person. We’re a small local government and solutions such as Doc Assembler and Docs On Tap have really exceeded our expectations and allowed us to achieve our objectives and beyond. When we’re talking about digital transformation, I think the main advantage is that it helps local governments do more with the resources they have.”
“Harbour Software has really made a difference for us, and we can always rely on Doc Assembler. It has improved not only the knowledge within the Shire, but also the way in which we process information.”
James Meakes
Manager Customer & Business Services
Talk to our team today to find out how you can implement innovative cloud solutions to advance your meeting agenda and minutes processes.
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