King Island Council in Tasmania has successfully implemented the MAGIQ Enterprise finance and administration software platform from MAGIQ Software.
Zoe Behrendt, Director of Corporate and Community Services, King Island Council discusses the overall implementation experience following Council’s go-live on the 1st of July.
Council’s decision to implement new business systems was driven by unprecedented economic development and growth on the Island. The previous business systems were old and out-dated and as a result Council staff were very ready for change and approached the implementation with a really positive attitude. According to Zoe this attitude and what she believes to be the excellent cultural fit between MAGIQ Software and Council has led to a very positive implementation experience.
“Our team here at Council have been amazing; we’re a relatively small Council and we relied on a number of key staff to help us complete our MAGIQ implementation. Everyone has been extremely positive and enthusiastic, completely embracing the change – we couldn’t have asked more of them,” said Zoe.
“My other observation is that there is an excellent cultural fit between the MAGIQ family and Council and great similarity in the way we like to work.”
King Island Council, General Manager, David Laugher also commented on the exceptional positive attitude of his staff.
“I’m very happy with the way the MAGIQ Enterprise project has gone and I’ve been really impressed by the way our staff have enthusiastically embraced the new systems. The overall attitude has been one of real positivity,” said David.
“This has certainly been the easiest system transition I’ve ever experienced in my career,” he said.
TRANSPARENCY & FLEXIBILITY CREATE A POSITIVE ENVIRONMENT FOR CHANGE
Zoe commented that she couldn’t be happier with the level and quality of support provided by the MAGIQ team throughout the implementation process. She believes the whole implementation has been conducted in a very friendly, transparent and honest way.
“Each of the MAGIQ team took the time to form close working relationships with our key staff and this has been really important to staff take-up and overall success of the project. Those personal connections helped to build an environment of trust and confidence, which meant that any issues or challenges that arose during the implementation were always dealt with in a very open and transparent way.”
Zoe says that as a smaller organisation, Council has to be flexible and adaptable and she believes MAGIQ Software also works that way. There has been a strong cultural fit between the two organisations.
“For example, while we’re always open to looking at ways we can improve our business processes, we couldn’t possibly completely change our processes to fit with a vendors approach in all instances. The MAGIQ team really understand this and have been fantastic at working with us to find and implement solutions that work for us and our staff – it’s been a real team effort.”
“The support from MAGIQ has been phenomenal. We know that we can call or email and we will always get a response – and again that comes back to culture and how both our organisations like to work,” said Zoe.
Zoe reflects that completing the software implementation in a little less than 4 months in order to achieve Council’s desire for a July 1st go-live, and align the new system with Council’s financial year, was a significant challenge.
“We had to be very flexible as we were really squeezing the ideal implementation timeframes down to achieve this speed of implementation.” Both Council staff and the MAGIQ team rose to the occasion and July the 1st was achieved with little stress.
“Our Dog Registrations always go out in the first week in July and we got them out on time. We struck our Rates right on schedule and we got through our first Payroll run without any major issues.”
Overall confidence and positivity of staff remains high at Council and Zoe and her team are very excited by the opportunity to continue to work with MAGIQ and look at further ways they can take advantage of their MAGIQ Enterprise business system.
“We’re always looking for ways to improve our customer service and business efficiency and I’m keen to work with the team at MAGIQ and continue to take advantage of as much functionality as possible to achieve this,” said Zoe.