Managing Change: Maroochy Shire Leads the Way

Over the past two years the Maroochy Shire Council and AECorganisational consulting have worked together successfully to develop and implement strategies to manage change of the Council's information systems.

Maroochy Shire Council uses an effective approach to enhancing its information systems - a "buy not build" philosophy. This means Maroochy chooses software that represents the best fit to the identified business needs and matches work processes where necessary to the systems and software chosen.

Each enhancement is treated as a discrete project that has a Project Manager, Project Teams (Maroochy staff from the business units who will use the new system), the Contractor (System and Software supplier) and a Change Manager. All of these people work in partnership with the business units to ensure a successful outcome.

Bill Andrew, Director of AECorganisational consulting has been the Change Manager for each of these projects over the past two years. Bill's role has been to assist the Project Manager and to work with the Project Team to develop and implement strategies to manage change (for example, involvement and participation by key stakeholders, communication and feedback processes) and facilitation of process improvement activities for the business units concerned.

The Information Systems Project Manager, Mr Peter Ellis said he was extremely happy with AECorganisational consulting's performance.

"Bill's approach to managing change is tailored to meet the specific needs of each project and he has made a valuable contribution to the success of our projects over the past two years," Mr Ellis said.

There have been several projects during this period including:
	Core Systems (property, rates, customer service systems)
	Financial Management Information System
	Human Resource Information System

Current projects include:
	Spatial Information System and
	Windows 2000

All projects have been completed successfully including being on time and within budget.