Remember when phone banking was introduced? That project would have taken banks years to implement – from the project delivery, through to setting up call centres, infrastructure, training the public on how to use the system, and creating the software to allow it to happen.
Now information technology projects are expected to take months – to create and deliver.
Globally, there is a trend for a shorter delivery time, to the point where customers are given a solution to a problem that they did not know existed.
How do information technologists strategise for this high level of customer expectation? By being smart about what platforms and systems to have in place.
An example at Wanganui District Council is in the way we provide customer information. There are legislative requirements for providing information, and it can be work-intensive to find the information and make it available.
But by implementing cross-platform searching for information, we can get it faster and more reliably to the customer. And we want to work to a point whereby customers can access public information easily online.
The less time staff have to put towards searching for information, the more time can be spent on other areas of service delivery, making the business smarter and more efficient.