MELBOURNE, Australia - One of Australia’s largest metropolitan councils, Brimbank City Council in Victoria, has become the first council in Australia to implement Pitney Bowes Spectrum Single Customer View solution to better connect with the community, offering enhanced services to improve efficiency, reduce waste and gain insights to offer a higher level of service to citizens.

Putting the community first was the council’s top priority, which required a shift in business model from property-centric to customer-centric. In the digitization process, the biggest challenge faced by the Council was multiple siloed corporate systems that resulted in disparate data, and created inefficiencies across the organisation. Due to data inaccuracies, the Council did not have a concise holistic view of the customer and the kind of services consumed by the customers. The council was challenged to meet increased community expectations whilst reducing inefficiencies.

In order to better connect and create efficient customer delivery models, the Council deployed a new transaction-based and mobile-responsive web site, a payment gateway and master data management solution (powered by Spectrum). In phase one, the Spectrum solution has integrated three of Council’s main corporate systems, providing data cleansing, data quality and analytics. Phase two would include another six corporate systems to create a single customer view.

‘Community first’ initiatives, such as online payments for paying rates, infringements and planning as well as the newly designed website offering services such as waste collection, senior and child care, parks, pets and disaster response were implemented to provide customers with 24x7 access.

“Digital transformation for the Council meant driving cultural change internally and digital change externally, and both were significantly important in a mission to drive a community-first work culture right across the organisation. The Spectrum solution has allowed us to be more responsive to customer needs, and greater customer satisfaction is already evident’, said, Helen Morrissey, Brimbank City Council Director of Corporate and Community Relations. “Additionally, Brimbank City Council is now able to respond to government compliance mandates with trusted, high-quality data validated by the Spectrum Single Customer View solution.”

Nigel Lester, Managing Director, Pitney Bowes, Software Solutions-ANZ, said, “Many organizations still lack the ability to enhance their customer understanding beyond what they see inside their CRM system or E-commerce interactions. With the Pitney Bowes offering, the Council can link these fragmented pockets of knowledge about the customer across systems of records, insights and interactions to deliver richer context. An agile approach allows new context to be added quickly to existing customer profiles to uncover timely and actionable insights. We’re honoured to be selected as a trusted partner to help Council in its mission to lead digitisation initiatives with accuracy and precision.”

Through the completion of phase one of the project—the integration of three of the Council’s main corporate systems, providing data cleansing, data quality and analytics—the Council has experienced the benefits of a customer-centric evolution based on a single view of the customer that helps the Council identify, locate and communicate with each citizen in a better way. Phase two of the project, expected to be delivered by April 2017 will involve the integration of a further six corporate systems to assist the Council to deliver precision and accuracy, and further enhance its understanding of citizens.