Customer Profile

The Hornsby Shire is located in the Upper North Shore area of the Sydney, covering an area of 455 km sq and home to around 160,000 people. Hornsby Shire is the largest council in the Greater Sydney Metropolitan region by area and is bound be Ku-ring-gai Chase national Park in the east and the Hawkesbury River to the north.

Challenge or problem

Council’s booking system and processes did not deliver a great customer experience. Systems were clunky with a high reliance on manual intervention and staff knowledge. Staff involvement was required throughout the entire booking lifecycle, from responding to customer enquiries, making and managing bookings, sending communications to customers through to financial processing.

Council conducted an internal review and business case and identified a need for change, key drivers include:

• • Identifiable efficiency opportunities
• • Improvement of the customer experience
• • Reduce risks associated with manual processing.

Attekus solution

Through a competitive process, Hornsby Shire Council selected Bookable and went live in May 2023. The initial focus was for bookings across over 20 halls and meeting rooms. Council has moved to a solution that now:

• • Provides online information, in real-time, on venue and space availability, suitability of use and booking requirements.
• • Allows customer to complete online bookings, including payments, with integration to Council’s payment gateway and ERP, TechnologyOne Financials.
• • Centralises all bookings into a single, enterprise solution, to increase visibility of booking information and data across the organisation.
• • Eliminates manual processes and streamline the internal review and approval for bookings across Council.
• • Improves venue utilisation through removing utilisation roadblocks put in place through previous manual and timely processes.

The results

Council’s Technology and Transformation Vision is to be “a customer focused provider of technology enabled business transformation” and “to improve the customer experience, work productively, and achieve Council’s service objectives”.

Through implementing Bookable, which aligns to Council’s Vision, Council has found that the customer experience has “vastly improved” and provides a “consistent and compelling experience”. Customers now have 24/7 availability to make and manage their bookings. Automated invoicing and flexible online payments for customers has also reduced debt in relation to bookings.

Internally, manual intervention by staff has been dramatically reduced, allowing staff to be more proactive in the customers journey. Automated communications throughout the booking lifecycle keeps staff, and the customer, up to date as bookings are reviewed, confirmed and paid.

Integration with existing Councils systems has provided additional benefits:

• • Customers are automatically provided keyless entry codes to Councils venues reducing the need to pick up and return keys
• • Financial transactions are automatically posted through to Council’s finance system, TechnologyOne Financials, and Finance staff no longer need to do manual refund for credit card payments.