King Island Council in Tasmania has chosen to implement the MAGIQ Enterprise council management system from MAGIQ Software. Council’s decision to implement new business systems has been driven by unprecedented economic development and growth on the Island.
King Island is a unique and picturesque island community located midway between Victoria and mainland Tasmania, on the western side of Bass Strait. The island covers over 1,098 square km, 64 kilometres north to south, and 27 kilometres east to west and is home to 1,500 permanent residents.
The King Island brand is internationally recognised for its high quality dairy, beef and seafood produce. Now the Island is embracing a significant increase in tourism, driven by two new world-class golf courses; the Cape Wickham and Ocean Dunes courses. The new golf courses complement the Island’s other attractions such as bird watching, sea fishing, surfing, arts and food events making King Island an idyllic destination rich with history, culture, and lifestyle.
Over the past two years annual visitors have increased dramatically presenting King Island Council with significant and exciting growth challenges and opportunities.
MAGIQ Enterprise is a fully web-based, cloud deliverable suite of council management and finance systems. The product suite features comprehensive Finance, Regulatory & Compliance, Revenue & Property, Community Engagement, Payroll and Human Resources systems.
Council has chosen to replace its existing business systems with MAGIQ to achieve its vision of an easy to use suite of fully integrated business systems, suitable for the needs of a small, progressive Council.
Recent economic growth and increased activity on the Island has driven a need to vastly improve productivity and has placed considerable pressure on Council’s business systems. Faced with the need to upgrade its existing systems, Council had decided to investigate other options in the marketplace.
“After evaluating three software vendors we decided MAGIQ Enterprise would meet all of our functional requirements. And as it turned out this was a much more cost-effective option for us than upgrading, ”said Zoe Behrendt, Director of Corporate and Community Services, King Island Council.
“We also felt the team at MAGIQ really understood smaller Councils and the constraints we work with, which we believe is critical to a successful implementation and long-term business partnership.”
According to Zoe, everyone at Council has positively embraced the systems change and staff are looking forward to using the new MAGIQ systems.
“Everyone is very positive and excited. MAGIQ has a very modern, easy to use interface and our staff are really looking forward to working with new, contemporary software, which they can already see will make their lives a lot easier and more efficient, “ said Zoe.
King Island Council has traditionally used the MAGIQ Performance Suite of Strategic Financial Management software to meet its Budgeting and Financial Reporting needs. A consistent ‘look and feel’ across the MAGIQ product suites will also assist with staff take-up and adoption.
Over the past two years the Island has experienced unprecedented economic growth and commercial property development driven essentially by golf tourism, placing considerable pressure on Council’s staff and business processes. Zoe believes the implementation of MAGIQ Enterprise will provide the opportunity to implement pro-active business processes in order to more effectively manage this activity and achieve greater business efficiency.
“We see a number of opportunities to improve service delivery using the MAGIQ Enterprise suite,” she said. “The ability to pro-actively engage with our community online 24 x 7 using the MAGIQ Online Portal is an exciting initiative we are keen to explore in the future in order to offer better services to our ratepayers here on the Island and to our remote customers and business partners.”
“It’s a very exciting and dynamic time here on King Island and we’re really looking forward to working with the MAGIQ team to achieve our objectives of greater business efficiency, improved staff satisfaction and better service levels for our customers,” said Zoe.