Council expands customer services

By ADAM GIFFORD

The Manukau City Council is using a PeopleSoft customer relationship management (CRM) system to improve its services to citizens.

It has chosen PeopleSoft to supply and implement the core technologies for its three-year $14.5 million Business Transformation Project.

Project sponsor Glenn Teal, the citizen and customer services portfolio manager, said services and ccountability should improve.

"We are really excited about the use of CRM to give a single, customer-centred view of council operations and services," Teal said.

"Historically, councils have looked at a lot of things in terms of property and land information, but properties and land don't ring up council wanting services.

"Putting a citizen-centred view of life into a computer system means we will have ways to serve people we did not have before."

The council this year is spending $3.7 million on the PeopleSoft solution and $2.3 million on hardware and implementation costs.

It plans to spend $6 million next year, mostly on implementation and change management, and $2.5 million in the 2003-2004 year.

Once the system is fully operational, "citizens can go to the internet for self-service, they will be able to call the call centre or wander into a customer service centre and the same system will be behind that interaction".

Teal said the project replaced 20-year-old standalone systems and automated a lot of the council's manual paper-based processes.

PeopleSoft was chosen because it scored highest in functionality and because "in the CRM area they really got to grips with what we were trying to do".

The PeopleSoft 8 system is designed to run over the internet. PeopleSoft Portal, which is accessible through a web browser, will be the single point of access to the system, which includes Financials, CRM, HR, Supply Chain Management and Enterprise Performance Management modules.

It will run on a Microsoft SQL Server database on Hewlett-Packard hardware.