
<p>Melbourne Water manages and protects Melbourne&#8217;s major water resources on behalf of the community. The organisation touches all parts of the water cycle that are essential to our way life: from providing clean drinking water, treating sewage, managing flooding, and keeping Melbourne&#8217;s rivers, creeks, and catchments healthy.</p>



<p>As an organisation, Melbourne Water wanted an uplift in customer focus. People at Melbourne Water agreed that there wasn&#8217;t enough focus on customers and what their needs were. In addition, guidance and structure to customer digital governance was lacking and the strategy and tactics were not clear enough. Melbourne Water simply did not put customers first.</p>



<p>Exco Partners were engaged to create a digital customer experience framework that is simple and practical for internal Melbourne Water people to use and that delivers meaningful experiences to customers.</p>



<h2>Our approach</h2>



<p>Most organisations place too much emphasis on mindsets. Long lasting positive change comes almost exclusively through action (behaviours) and habit-building. Tailoring the approach for this effect, the emphasis of the Melbourne Water program was to develop and embed a select number of skills and focus on staff building them into habits where they form part of the ‘way things are done’.</p>



<p>The overall objective was to build foundational customer experience skills (including mastery skills in specialist areas) and capability uplift across the entire Melbourne Water organisation.</p>



<h3>Our framework for customer experience uplift:</h3>



<div class="is-content-justification-center is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-1 wp-block-group">
<div class="wp-block-exco-services-card services-card iconed"><div class="icon"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/users-yellow.svg"/></div><h4 class="title">Make it everyones job</h4><div class="details">Customer experience is often considered the domain of front-line workers. The sales and customer staff for example. CX uplift requires commitment from everyone.</div></div>



<div class="wp-block-exco-services-card services-card iconed"><div class="icon"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/users-yellow.svg"/></div><h4 class="title">First build the fundamentals</h4><div class="details">Most organisations place too much emphasis on mindsets. Long lasting positive change comes almost exclusively through action (behaviours) and habit-building. </div></div>



<div class="wp-block-exco-services-card services-card iconed"><div class="icon"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/users-yellow.svg"/></div><h4 class="title">Customers focus</h4><div class="details">It is important that everyone uses the customer and the customer&#8217;s objectives at a north star in their decision making.</div></div>
</div>



<p><em>&nbsp;</em></p>



<p>Exco approached this project by understanding the biggest pain points in the organisation to design a course to address those needs.</p>



<p>The first phase, Discover + Assess focused on understanding Melbourne Water&#8217;s current state, future state and how to get there. This was done by interviewing Melbourne Water employees. The interviewees were very engaged, providing invaluable insights and resources. The co-design approach meant Exco could create meaningful and targeted training modules.</p>



<p>The second phase, Synthesize + Create involved converting discovery (interviews and existing Reputation &amp; Customer Satisfaction data) into desired module content. The modules covered the learning approach, tools, habits and outcomes. These learning modules blended media, individual, group and facilitator-led approaches and incorporated activities that will build CX capability, but also be able to function as stand-alone areas of learning for participants. &nbsp;</p>



<p>Exco worked with people in Melbourne Water to deliver these materials and incorporated assignments for participants to complete between modules to keep focus. It was also agreed that leaders would give people time during their day to practice what they learnt in the modules.</p>



<p>The final phase, Test + Roll out focused on rolling out the modules to the &#8216;Early Adopters&#8217;, a group of employees at Melbourne Water that were deemed subject matter experts within the organisation. This allowed the group a chance to review the content and to further strengthen out the learning modules with participants. Exco gave a range of tools that they can use with customers and taught them how to use it and set an internal culture where they can practice this e.g. a Teams group was created so individuals can share questions.</p>



<h2>The result</h2>



<p>Exco developed and delivered seven customised customer experience capability modules to train and coach staff across the organisation from frontline and team leaders to management.</p>



<p>Foundational courses focused on the basics:</p>



<ul>
<li>Who are the customers, and why are they<br>important</li>



<li>Delivering exceptional services</li>



<li>Open communication and engagement</li>



<li>Relationship management</li>
</ul>



<p>Mastery courses focused on:</p>



<ul>
<li>Developing sustainable strategic partnerships</li>



<li>Community Engagement</li>



<li>Turning insights into action</li>
</ul>



<p>Courseware was also enhanced with digital vlogs covering key content and train-the-trainer services were provided.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-full is-resized"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/mw-1.jpg" alt="" class="wp-image-5403" width="1400" height="855"/></figure></div>


<p>Exco partners surveyed the participants after delivering the training modules. Results showed that the program was valuable:</p>



<ul>
<li>100% of respondents said they learnt something new;</li>



<li>89% of respondents rated the quality of the training 4/5 out of 5;</li>



<li>95% of respondents rated the quality of the instruction 4/5 out of 5.</li>
</ul>



<h2>Conclusion</h2>



<p>Exco successfully researched, designed and implemented training modules at Melbourne Water to manage customer-facing content and services. Melbourne Water can broadcast the learning throughout the organisation to ensure lifting customer awareness and focus. Selected Early Adopters will assist in strengthening the learning content and approach to roll-out the training modules and continue the CX capability building.</p>


Customer Experience Uplift Program


<p>ResourceSmart Schools (RSS) is a leading, internationally-recognised sustainability and climate change education program offered by Sustainability Victoria (SV). The structured framework and facilitated support provides guidance, knowledge and skills to achieve measurable environmental change within schools and beyond the school gate.</p>



<p>ResourceSmart Schools helps school communities benefit from embedding sustainability into everything they do and is well placed to help Victorians take action on climate change. By participating in the program, schools implement appropriate solar generation systems, energy efficiency and other sustainable practices (water efficiency, improved waste management, and biodiversity improvement) through curriculum, school operations, culture and community.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>Exco Partners <strong>Digital Experience Runtime,</strong> bridging the enterprise grade performance of Dynamics CRM with an amazing digital customer experience and user engagement capability&nbsp;</p>
</blockquote>



<p>Despite the RSS program being highly successful to date, SV was facing a significant problem with declining user participation attributable to the legacy web application that supports the program. The legacy web application was built on an ageing technology stack that was relatively slow, unintuitive for users, and caused a range of user-related issues driving user decline.</p>



<p>Sustainability Victoria engaged Exco Partners to address these challenges and uncover better ways to reach and engage with school communities and develop new ways to interact with these groups to support a long-term and sustainable benefit.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/rss-mockup.png" alt="" class="wp-image-3057" width="800"/></figure></div>


<p>Exco Partners delivered an innovative solution based on the Microsoft Dynamics 365 platform. The Microsft Dynamics 365 platform provided an enterprise-grade foundation for customer relationship management (CRM), business process automation and customer support. Teachers and Students interacted with the platform via a React-based user-experience oriented web interface designed by our award-winning design team.</p>



<p>We established the project with the following objectives:</p>



<ul>
<li>Enable further reach and engagement with the teaching, student and school communities in general</li>



<li>Develop new ways to create a long-term connection with the above user groups</li>



<li>Increase the accessibility and usability of the program</li>



<li>Increase SV’s ability to contribute to Victoria’s positive sustainable and environmental practices.</li>
</ul>



<p>The project was approached with three key phases drawing on our CoreMethods™ methodology. We designed each phase to address key aspects of the project and drew on specific skills across our multi-disciplined Exco Partners capabilities.&nbsp;</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>“An innovative solution was required to utilise the Microsoft Dynamics platform without compromising the consumer user experience”</p>
</blockquote>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignright size-full is-resized"><a href="https://excopartners.com/2022/08/26/crn-impact-awards"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/CRN_Impact_FinalistTiles_PlatformInnovator.png" alt="" class="wp-image-3110" width="300"/></a></figure></div>


<p>Our first phase, Discovery, focused on customer research, stakeholder engagement, visual design, and planning. The key finding from the Discovery phase indicated there were three critical areas of focus the new platform needed to address.&nbsp;</p>



<p>Usability: make the system easy and intuitive, reduce steps, automate processes, and simplify user workflow.</p>



<p>Engagement / Motivation: building an environment that encourages and motivates students toward sustainability through sharing, small wins and clarity of benefits.</p>



<p>Support: creating a platform and online community from which teachers and students can manage their journey without the need for a dedicated SV support</p>



<p>Our second phase, Build, delivered the technology solution in a series of two-week sprints. The functional components were documented as User Stories and then iteratively developed and system tested.</p>



<p>A vital requirement of the technology stack was to vastly simplify the legacy platform infrastructure, which required multiple web and database servers.</p>



<p>The back-of-house capability needed a secure and robust data management capability so that the Sustainability Victoria product managers could support their customers. The ability to search, filter and report on school data without speciality support was important, as was the flexibility to continue to evolve school data with data and process automation.</p>



<p>We selected the Microsoft Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Power Platform based on power and ability to integrate seamlessly and securely into an enterprise technology environment, such as managed by Sustainability Victoria. &nbsp;</p>



<p>The power of tools such as Microsoft Power Automate and Power BI further enhanced the capability of the back-of-house solution.</p>



<p>An innovative solution was required to utilise the Microsoft Dynamics platform without compromising the consumer user experience and to address the user research findings of usability, engagement, motivation, and support.</p>



<p>The React framework was desirable for the technology solution of the consumer user interface. React is the most popular framework for delivering amazing user experiences on the web and has significantly enhanced our solution’s user experience capability.</p>



<p>We used our Digital Experience Runtime toolset to accelerate the integration of the front-of-house React user interface to the back-of-house Microsoft Dynamics platform. This integration created a seamless experience for managing data for both consumer and internal SV users.</p>



<p>We selected an Azure Active Directory B2C solution for managing consumer user authentication, reducing the need for bespoke security and user identity management. Our front-of-house user interface solution was deployed in a serverless container environment, which vastly simplified the infrastructure needed to support the system.</p>



<p>The final solution, live in mid-2022, successfully delivered a solution that supports almost 3000 schools across Victoria. Sustainability Victoria is also discussing options to bring other Australian states on board using their own branded version of the technology solution.</p>



<p>The solution was recognised by the industry for innovation in the CRN Impact Awards 2022.</p>



<div class="wp-block-exco-hero-content exco-hero-content container-fluid secondary">

<h2 class="has-text-align-left"><strong>Our Experience Runtime and RADD stack</strong></h2>

<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignright size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/radd-stack@2x.png" alt="" class="wp-image-3059" width="600"></figure></div>

<p class="has-text-align-left">Our Digital Experience Runtime is a curated collection of services, tools and methods designed to accelerate the delivery of amazing digital experiences.</p>


<p class="has-text-align-left">These accelerators enable the rapid development of rich consumer user experiences. The solution is backed by the enterprise-grade performance and flexibility of the Microsoft Dynamics 365 and Microsoft Power platforms.&nbsp;</p>


<p class="has-text-align-left">The Exco Partners Digital Experience Runtime lets us create innovative and user-experience oriented solutions using the React user interface framework.</p>


<p class="has-text-align-left">The Exco Partners RADD stack allows for a serverless deployment of the Digital Runtime based solution to simplify infrastructure support and management complexity. React, Azure AD B2C, Dynamics and Docker.</p>

</div>


tomatos

Amazing digital experiences with Dynamics CRM

A platform for sustainable schools


<p>Enrolling a child in kindergarten is a critical turning point in families&#8217; lives and is a significant, often first, interaction with the local government or council.</p>



<p>With the Victoria Government making significant contributions to early childhood development programs, many local governments are looking for innovative ways to engage, support and sustain their early childhood programs.</p>



<p>Exco Partners have engaged with various councils and local government groups as part of many programs to digitise the citizen experience.</p>



<p>Our most recent work was with Knox City Council (KCC) to design their &#8220;KN Enrol&#8221; system. The objective of the design was to simplify the kindergarten enrolment process for parents and to streamline the enrolment review process for the Educators. In line with the KCC&#8217;s Service Excellence value, it was important for this initiative that the process be efficient, convenient and easy for parents, including those facing language and other barriers.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="aligncenter size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/knox-concept@2x-1024x630.png" alt="" class="wp-image-2832" width="600" srcset="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/knox-concept@2x-1024x630.png 1024w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/knox-concept@2x-300x185.png 300w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/knox-concept@2x-768x472.png 768w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/knox-concept@2x-1536x945.png 1536w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/knox-concept@2x-2048x1260.png 2048w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/knox-concept@2x-1400x861.png 1400w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/knox-concept@2x-800x492.png 800w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure></div>


<p>Our process started with a design sprint to review the existing processes, conduct research and analysis with the end-users and design a prototype user experience concept the delivered on the specific needs of Knox City Council, its educators and its citizens.</p>



<p>The solution will go live in Q4 2021.</p>



<blockquote class="wp-block-quote">
<p>The Exco team have been fantastic to work with. They worked to really understand what was needed and always had our families in mind and what their experience would be. Their innovative thinking helped us create an enrolment form which is easy for families to navigate and edit.</p>
<cite>Andrea Bulacios, Knox City Council</cite></blockquote>



<h3>Our solution to Kindergarten Enrolment and Placement</h3>



<p>Our Digital Kindergarten Enrolment and Placement (KEP) solution enables councils to accelerate their digitisation efforts and meet the demands of a digital-first user experience for their citizens.</p>


<div class="wp-block-image">
<figure class="alignright size-large is-resized"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/kinder-mock-ups-1-1024x943.png" alt="" class="wp-image-2829" width="400" srcset="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/kinder-mock-ups-1-1024x943.png 1024w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/kinder-mock-ups-1-300x276.png 300w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/kinder-mock-ups-1-768x707.png 768w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/kinder-mock-ups-1-652x600.png 652w, https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/kinder-mock-ups-1.png 1108w" sizes="(max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></figure></div>


<p>Exco Partners have designed KEP to take advantage of existing Victorian Government licences and existing Microsoft based infrastructure to deliver a secure, scalable and cost-effective Kindergarten information management system.</p>



<p>The KEP solution supports the Department of Education and Training requirements (KIMS) for data collection and reporting automating procedures for compliance and funding support.</p>



<p>KEP does not mandate strict and rigid processes allowing complete customisation and integration with existing council infrastructure and operations, including approval workflows, identity management and CRM</p>



<p><br><br></p>


kinder-drawing

Microsoft PowerApps Development

Digitising Kinder Enrolment


<p>Major Road Projects Victoria (MRPV) is a dedicated government body charged with planning and delivering major road projects for Victoria. MRPV is part of the Major Transport Infrastructure Authority (MTIA) which was established on 1 January 2019 within the Victorian Government Department of Transport.</p>



<p>The establishment of MRPV saw the assembly of a range of people from across existing government departments and agencies, including Vic Roads, Department of Transport, Department of Treasury and Finance and industry including engineers, designers, analysts and others. This enabled MRPV to establish strong organisational capability quickly with domain areas, establishing specific disciplines almost immediately. &nbsp;</p>



<p>It soon became clear that MRPV would need a well understood end-to-end delivery approach to achieve expected levels of efficiency and effectiveness in delivering large multi-year road projects. MRPV agreed to define and implement a Project Management Framework called PMF incorporating a Program Delivery Approach (PDA). MRPV wanted to present the PMF in an interactive format that was available within the Intranet and allowed users to both browse the high-level framework and access detailed processes, templates and guides quickly and easily.</p>



<p>The objective of the project was to establish a Project Management Framework that would enable a clear delivery approach for all road projects and would be embraced by future MRPV Project teams. The framework was expected to guide future projects in the common application of lifecycle stages, approval gates, process within each phase, key reporting milestones and domain-specific guidance and templates (such as safety, engineering, planning, procurement, controls, etc).</p>



<p>The MRPV project team, MRPV content providers and Exco Partners were bought together in a highly collaborative manner and constructively challenged to deliver short, medium and longer-term outcomes based on an agreed series of two-week development sprints. &nbsp;The team operated to a clearly defined plan and regular stand-ups gave the team the opportunity to communicate, plan collaborative work efforts, clear impediments and celebrate incremental achievements. &nbsp;</p>



<h2>Approach</h2>



<p>The project team, under the guidance of the Project Manager, employed several methods and techniques to ensure effective delivery of the outputs and outcomes.</p>



<div class="is-content-justification-center is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-2 wp-block-group large">
<div class="wp-block-exco-icon-card exco-icon-card"><div class="icon"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/rocket-yellow-1.svg"/></div><div class="title">Sprint based delivery method</div><div class="details">Work was defined and sequenced into two-week delivery sprints. At the beginning of each sprint, the team completed a detailed sprint plan to ensure clarity of scope and responsibilities for the sprint. Twice weekly stand-ups enabled the team to coordinate, clarify and unblock. At the end of each sprint there was a demonstration of content and working systems via a showcase. This approach held the entire team to account and positively supported incremental delivery.</div></div>



<div class="wp-block-exco-icon-card exco-icon-card"><div class="icon"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/check-list-yellow.svg"/></div><div class="title">Planned &amp; Measured Incremental Delivery Method</div><div class="details">A breakdown of total content (pages) was mapped upfront and content ownership assigned. This gave the team a visual guide of progress and remaining work at all times. The Intranet site into which the PMF content was published was built early so that draft content could be bought to life in the context of an interactive user driven environment for progressive validation and acceptance.</div></div>
</div>



<div class="is-content-justification-center is-nowrap is-layout-flex wp-container-3 wp-block-group large">
<div class="wp-block-exco-icon-card exco-icon-card"><div class="icon"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/award-yellow.svg"/></div><div class="title">Quality Assurance Technique</div><div class="details">Quality was assured using tiered Acceptance Testing. This supported validation and acceptance of the navigation, look and feel, content and user experience within each delivery sprint.</div></div>



<div class="wp-block-exco-icon-card exco-icon-card"><div class="icon"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/directions-yellow.svg"/></div><div class="title">Time, Cost and Quality objectives</div><div class="details">The project was delivered within originally planned budget and slightly exceeded the originally intended time frame (15% over). The quality of the PMF solution met and in some areas exceeded the quality criteria set. The customer (both the PMO and the MRPV User base) was extremely happy with the result. By the end of the project the PMF had become something that people talked about in the corridor, referenced regularly and pointed each other to for information.</div></div>
</div>



<h2>Outcomes</h2>



<p>The project team are proud of what they were able to deliver within the timeframe. For those who contributed content there is a great sense of ownership of the PMF and content owners continue to refine content based on feedback from users and changes in the operating environment. PMF elevated the profile of some content owners across MRPV and have enabled them to position as clear Subject Matter Experts within the organisation.</p>



<p>The project team gained a sense of trust in working collaboratively with an external consulting group to the benefit of the organisation. This has translated to additional follow on work with other consultants since.</p>



<p>The project team have continued to use tools such as planner boards and run rate charts as techniques for planning and measuring delivery.</p>



<p>Ultimately, the project team, through robust consultation across multiple MRPV functional areas and external Departments, delivered an output that places best practice project management at the front and centre of objectives. This has left the project team feeling exceptionally rewarded.</p>



<p>MRPV now has a clear delivery approach. It is documented and presented in an interactive Intranet Site that enables users to find the information they need, when they need it. New starters, consultants and short term contractors have a place to get an overview of MRPV’s approach to project delivery.</p>



<p>MRPV now initiate and deliver projects in a consistent fashion. Different areas of the organisation understand what each other do better than they did before PMF.</p>



<p>This clarity and consistency enables a degree of repeatability in MRPVs goal to achieve excellence in delivery.</p>



<p>The project was seen as a success because it delivered exactly what was expected. The outcome has created interest within the organisation and outside the organisation and it is perceived to have delivered ongoing operational benefit to MRPV. &nbsp;</p>



<p>Furthermore the platform has allowed for the effective release of further innovations in ways of transforming delivery with the subsequent release of the Program Delivery approach (PDA) which targets improvements not just in program delivery but in the evolution of industries that deliver major infrastructure projects.</p>


bolte

Project Management Framework

MRPV Project Management Framework


<p>Effective Portfolio, Program and Project Offices provide significant benefits through leadership, clarity, focus and alignment. Good ones will increase efficiency, deter missteps and support the organisation to deliver change in a calm and fit for purpose manner. They will also enable a balance of stability and adaptability consistent with the organisation’s way of working and market environment.</p>



<p>Strong offices are able to provide support and add value in environments that leverage traditional and contemporary delivery practices and play a key role in helping organisations transform they way they work. We are observing more organisations that are employing multiple modes of delivery and relying more heavily on the enterprise office to assist in the alignment of the modes. &nbsp;</p>



<p>Exco Partners are experts in Portfolio, Program and Project Offices and have been helping organisations to define and uplift offices for over fourteen years. We define and implement flexible offices that align to an organisation&#8217;s current and intended way of working. Our models balance support and assurance to provide confidence, transparency and visibility of future forecasts. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>



<p>Our team have a depth of experience across a range of offices from enterprise portfolio offices to concentrated large project offices. We leverage our breadth of existing models, best practice and intellectual property that has been refined over the past fourteen years. Our team brings a robust methodology for not only defining a fit for purpose office framework, but also managing organisational change to enable uplifting capability and embedding new ways of working.</p>



<p>A change in office framework and approach often leads to a need for change in the project management system (PPM) technology. We are also skilled in the leadership, management and delivery of the PPM technology implementation. As an example of our work, we assisted a new strategically important and fast moving, Government entity with the design and definition of their Program Office and delivery framework. The implemented model immediately helped the organisation to deliver the initial set of pilot projects and identify opportunities to adapt and adjust the delivery model and requisite legislative powers.</p>


swing-bridge-bush

Project Office Tools

PMO Implementation


<p>Exco Partners was engaged by a Victorian Government Department review the Procurement and uplift the approach and detail in order to support more effective delivery and continuous improvement.</p>



<p>The review and subsequent implementation of the framework will enable greater consistency through the refinement of accessible process diagrams and workflows to guide detailed feasibility, engineering and design, procurement and delivery stages of major road projects.</p>



<p>The engagement aimed to identify, and where possible quantify, the specific process areas that have been impacted by changes to the procurement framework, benchmark the current state with other major infrastructure organisations operating within the same procurement framework, and identify potential process changes to improve process efficiency and effectiveness. The engaged sourced a significant data sample of completed procurement requests, developed and analysed the data to inform the design of the to be process models.<br></p>



<p>The engagement then moved to the implementation of the initial recommendations, specifically a fit for purpose to-be process model designed to reduce the number and frequency of non-conforming procurement requests, make the procurement process (regardless of procurement type) easier to consume, provide greater visibility of the in-flight procurement requests, and define a consistent way of working for the businesses procurement team.</p>



<p>The engagement included the development of an interim automated solution (share-point) to drive earlier stakeholder engagement, and consistent procurement advice to reduce the ‘time to procure<br>metric’.</p>



<h3>Approach</h3>



<p>The DMAIC six sigma approach was use to complete the engagement, as follows:</p>



<div class="wp-block-exco-flex-container exco-flex-block container-fluid">

<div class="wp-block-exco-icon-card exco-icon-card" data-sal="slide-up" data-sal-duration="1000"><div class="icon"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/pencil-ruler.svg"></div><div class="title">Define</div><div class="details">The existing process was not well defined. The engagement documented the current
business practices and compared them to the stated procurement framework (owned by the MTIA).</div></div>


<div class="wp-block-exco-icon-card exco-icon-card" data-sal="slide-up" data-sal-duration="1000"><div class="icon"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/scales.svg"></div><div class="title">Measure</div><div class="details">A large sample of 1100+ completed procurements was undertaken to understand the
magnitude of the problem. A clear insight was the effort/value relationship on procurement activity.</div></div>


<div class="wp-block-exco-icon-card exco-icon-card" data-sal="slide-up" data-sal-duration="1000"><div class="icon"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/magnifying-glass.svg"></div><div class="title">Analyse</div><div class="details">The analysis of the as-is process (via a series of quick start workshops), identified areas
of non-alignment with the MTIA and helped prioritise to-be changes</div></div>


<div class="wp-block-exco-icon-card exco-icon-card" data-sal="slide-up" data-sal-duration="1000"><div class="icon"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/tools.svg"></div><div class="title">Improve</div><div class="details">The as-is process was then reviewed via 3 difference lenses. The customer, the
approver and the MRPV procurement team to identify and prioritise the improvement areas</div></div>


<div class="wp-block-exco-icon-card exco-icon-card" data-sal="slide-up" data-sal-duration="1000"><div class="icon"><img decoding="async" src="https://cms.excopartners.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/award.svg"></div><div class="title">Control</div><div class="details">In order to ensure uptake of the to-be process (from all stakeholder groups) a detailed
‘playbook’ for the procurement was developed referencing the new automated solution (also
developed).</div></div>

</div>



<h3><br><strong>Governance</strong></h3>



<p><br>The overall engagement was managed by an allocated Exco Partner – who was responsible for<br>service delivery and commercial oversight.<br>Skills, capabilities &amp; systems</p>



<ul>
<li>Development and management of tendering strategies addressing good commercial and<br>government policy and practice</li>



<li>Development of project tender documentation, including Invitations for Expression of Interest,<br>Requests for Proposals, Tenders and/or Quotes, Project Briefs and Service Agreements,<br>incorporating:
<ul>
<li>Clear and measurable output specifications,</li>



<li>Performance standards and performance management requirements</li>
</ul>
</li>



<li>Advice on and/or management of Tender processes including:
<ul>
<li>Tender processes and evaluations (may include interactive tender processes and<br>workshops)</li>
</ul>
</li>
</ul>



<h3>Outcomes</h3>



<p><strong>The outcomes of the engagement:</strong></p>



<ul>
<li>A clear, concise, consistent process for procurement regardless of type (new,<br>variation or exemption) or value (less than or greater than $250k)</li>



<li>A vastly improved customer experience for the departments business. An easier to consume<br>process, and an automated procurement initiation document (PID) that improves the time taken<br>to seek approval and provides visibility on the status of the procurement activity.</li>



<li>A significant improvement in the effectiveness and efficiency of the departments procurement<br>team’s output. More proactive advice as opposed to reactive execution (as was the case before<br>this change)</li>



<li>A closer alignment of the departments process with the overarching MTIA procurement framework with<br>the express purpose of reducing the incidents of non-conforming procurement.</li>
</ul>



<p><br><strong>The performance of the engagement:</strong><br>This engagement was impacted by a number of business issues that required<br>changes to the initial scope, schedule, and timeframes of delivery (the introduction of new<br>stakeholders and delays to the Sharepoint development environment being two issues that required<br>changes to the priority and sequencing of deliverables). The engagement was completed within the agreed timeframes and within the agreed commercial construct to a very high quality standard.</p>



<p>As a value-add the Exco team have agreed to recurring reviews (initially fortnightly and then<br>monthly) to ensure the new process is embedded, review the performance of the automated solution<br>and review the data associated with team performance to ensure it is delivering as expected.</p>


Government / Public Sector

Customer Experience Uplift Program

A platform for sustainable schools

Digitising Kinder Enrolment

MRPV Project Management Framework

PMO Implementation

Victorian Government Procurement Process Design