The Situation

Catholic Education Western Australia (CEWA) is a system of over 150 primary and secondary private Catholic schools in Western Australia. Providing Christ-centred and child-focused education, the schools and colleges enable students to gain confidence in their abilities and to achieve their unique potential.

Mike Kovacevic Chief Technology Officer describes the organisation and his role, “comparable to the Department of Education, we operate, manage and govern the Catholic Schools in the state. I was initially brought in to run the digital transformation, which we call LEADing Lights.

“When I started five years ago, each school operated as its own business, mostly disconnected from the other 150+ schools. The objective was to operate as one connected organisation for the benefit of all staff, students and communities. For our IT systems that meant building a single digital platform. In our case, we chose to move our applications and infrastructure  to Microsoft Cloud.”

About Catholic Education Western Australia (CEWA)

Catholic Education Western Australia’s schools, colleges and learning centres have been a central part of the Western Australian education landscape for over 150 years and constitute the second largest primary and secondary education provider in Western Australia.

Their shared Catholic tradition and the child-centred learning practices inherent in each of our schools and colleges have enabled generations of young people to examine and realise their unique gifts, talents and abilities.

CEWA’s aim is to support all students to think independently and learn to know, love and respect themselves and others. The schools embrace Christian virtues and are communities of hope where students, staff and families are treated with dignity and respect.

The Challenges

Mike explains the challenges CEWA was facing during the first stage of the digital transformation, “As in many well established organisations, we were delivering a high quality service but behind the scenes people were using different processes, and many weren’t documented. Consistency was not always there between how our offices and schools implement processes and flows. Also, some of the long-standing processes had not been questioned in a long time, whether doing things a certain way still made sense.” This led us to implementing Nintex Promapp as the preferred solution to document and standardise business processes to support and accelerate our digital transformation.

“For any product, technology is half the problem, the human side is the other half. During the introduction of the Promapp software our staff needed guidance in terms of best practice and the right level of detail.

“Within IT, we didn’t know how to ask the questions in the right way for each business unit to map their processes effectively, and consequently we weren’t using the software effectively. This is when we began to look for a consultant to help us.

“From the staff’s perspective, a lot of them would say ‘Great software, great idea, but we don’t know where to start.’ Or ‘What does good look like?’ They didn’t know what to aim for. We could see examples on the internet, but none fit our culture and how we work.”

The Objectives

• Perform health check and determine the best approach to refresh Promapp.
• Increase Promapp user engagement across the CEWA Head Office.
• Provide a one-stop shop for all business processes.
• Provide suitable training to ensure all users understand not just how to use the tool itself but realise the important benefits people can gain from it.
• Review, clean, retain or remove the 450 processes already entered in the system.
• Identify and document over 200 processes within the Digital Technology Directorate.

The Solution

Mike explains how he found a solution to the challenges his organisation was facing, “I had met Troy while originally researching what software we should use to map our processes. Then when I realised we needed a consultant, I asked around and TAS was recommended by one of our senior partners.”

The solution for CEWA entailed:

• Establishing and implementing a change management strategy to ensure long-term success of the project.
• Executing health check findings by removing unnecessary processes and documents in Promapp.
• Alongside Digital Technology, work with other directorates to capture business processes and identify opportunities for improvement.
• Restructuring the process governance by reducing strict controls and enabling business users to become champions within their own departments, providing rights to approve and publishing their own processes.
• Establishing an appropriate training matrix.
• Working on migration of priority processes and implementing a structured change management approach.
• Facilitating process capture sessions with appropriate teams to ensure the entry of good quality processes in Promapp to avoid garbage in / garbage out.
• Removing the aim for immediate perfection through the introduction of the 80/20 rule.
• Implementing an adaptive and innovative process culture.

“Some consultants can get caught up in the detail, Troy keeps people on track, and gently coaxes them back on the path to meet the main objectives. He builds rapport. I have never had any other feedback than ‘he is just amazing.’”

The Results

• Through identifying process dependencies, interaction within individual departments and cross collaboration with other directorates is continuously improving.
• Engrained improvement mindset, embracing opportunities for improvement, and realising the benefits of regular process changes.
• Over 280 processes published in Promapp and accessible by all.
• Another 120 processes are currently in progress.
• An average of five days between creation and publication of new processes, accepting that 80% is good enough, allowing continuous improvement to take priority.
• Earlier considerations of understanding processes before jumping straight into improvement mode.

  Mike explains how TAS Advisory Services performed, “Troy has exceeded all of our expectations. We now have 400 processes mapped. He’s shown people how to do the work. He trained staff, and passed on the technical knowledge creating internal product champions.  We now have a common language between IT and the rest of the business. He enables our employees and is ready to pull away at any point. He has enabled us to run without training wheels. He provides just the right level of instruction. We can have a conversation and capture just the right level of detail, which we didn’t know how to do before. We’ll still hold onto him as he gets a lot done, always more than what he committed to deliver.

  “If we did the work alone, we would get resistance and we wouldn’t know how to deal with it. Troy is driven and he will go and open his own doors, and set goals, he needs no management. You’ll say this is what I want to achieve and he’ll delight you with the outcome. He has an ability to keep people focused, his approach is a lot more gentle compared to a typical technology focused consultant.

  “Troy will book a 15 minute meeting, and walk away with everything he needed. It’s a pretty special talent. Some consultants can get caught up in the detail, he keeps people on track, and gently coaxes them back on the path to meet the main objectives. He builds rapport, asks a lot of questions, and draws between the dots, capturing how we might make things work better. Within his first two months, people would say, “Troy is amazing. Can we have him help us more?’ I have never had any other feedback than he is just amazing.

  “We’re 60% of the way through our digital transformation journey and I see us doing a whole lot more with TAS. They will be the enabler for the next level of digital transformation which involves creating a modern workplace where mundane tasks are taken care of by machines, and people will have more time for creativity.”

  Download the Catholic Education Western Australia Case Study

The Situation 

Geographe is an Australian owned provider of commercial and technical engineering solutions to the mining, exploration, earthmoving, oil, gas and mineral processing industries. Geographe manufactures pins, bushes, gearboxes, gear products and wear components to suit major OEM brands including Atlas Copco, Caterpillar, Hitachi, Komatsu, Liebherr, Sandvik, Tamrock, Toro and more.

Tim Davies has worked at Geographe for over 17 years. He explains “Geographe is a family owned business, manufacturing replacement parts for mining, marine and agriculture in Australia and internationally. We’re quality, safety and environmentally accredited, with 30 years of quality accreditation. Our manufacturing is in Bunbury and Kewdale, where the majority of sales and engineering staff are. We also have sales staff across Australia and employ around 100 people.”

Tim is a Metallurgist, but recently took on the role of Business Process Manager, which is how he began looking at TAS Advisory Services and Promapp’s role in the organisation.

Promapp is a web-based application used to create, navigate, share and change business processes, enabling quality assurance, risk management and business continuity. Geographe selected Promapp as their preferred business process management solution in 2017. Tim says “Initially Promapp was launched at the company, along with a lot of other projects such as the implementation of SAP, so Promapp fell off the radar.” After the implementation training it was lacking buy-in from the wider business, and not being used as intended, because of this Geographe were not receiving a positive return on their investment in Promapp.

The Challenges

Tim defines the catalyst for review in 2019, “There was an overall business process review, which uncovered some alarming results. It sparked the motion of hiring someone to take on the role of heading up Promapp, which is the role I commenced. The figures for waste and rework were 25%, and that was down to not having effective and efficient processes. We also had month end reporting taking longer than expected, and that was due to a lack of defined processes.”

“Another challenge to overcome was that there was a lack of transparency, leading to a lack of visibility up and down stream. A general feeling that employees had to micromanage their processes going through the business, as there was no defined or transparent process. Our labour efficiency ratio was significantly lower than standard benchmarks.”

The Objectives

• Increase Promapp user engagement across the organisation.
• Create more transparency within the business.
• Use Promapp for a centralised business process management tool, to demonstrate and control the business to align with the quality management system.
• Ensure suitable training to all users across the business.
• Streamline business processes across Bunbury and Perth locations and eliminate process inefficiencies. 

The Solution

“We engaged TAS Advisory Services because of Director Troy Sweeney’s experience with Promapp.” Tim explains.

The solution for Geographe entailed:

• Perform a health check, identify business critical processes, and provide priorities for the next 12 months.
• Implement an adaptive and innovative process culture.
• Scoping Health Check and executing findings.
• Removing unnecessary processes and documents in Promapp.
• Restructure, redefine, and communicate the process government structure.
• Adjusting controls and establishing an appropriate training matrix.
• Establish appropriate training sessions, from beginner to advanced.
• Facilitate process capture sessions with appropriate teams, to ensure the entry of good quality processes in Promapp.
• Migration of processes to Promapp, structured around the change management approach.

The Results

• Promapp usage is up 117% month to month.
• Over 164 process improvement suggestions.
• Around 93% staff are now trained and using Promapp.
• From 2017-2020 there was one published process and 122 unpublished processes. Within months of engaging TAS Advisory Services there are 176 published processes and 80 currently in progress, and 12,687 process views.

“The change management TAS Advisory Services brought to Geographe has been invaluable. There’s a defined approach that Troy has implemented that we try to stick to through Promapp. Previously people were going back and forth, and now there’s more face to face meetings and great follow up. Promapp enables everyone to see policies and processes and give feedback.”

“There’s also a sense of transparency and understanding functions of the business coming out of the silo effect, and being able to communicate, document and provide feedback. Employees have more awareness of the rest of the business because everyone else’s processes are in there.”

“From start to finish TAS Advisory Services created a need for a drive and want for a project. They have an ongoing commitment, and availability, meaning they’re approachable and always contactable. It’s an excellent professional service.”

Download the Geographe Case Study

The Situation

Founded in 1905, Aqwest has been obtaining, treating, and distributing water for the people of Bunbury and its surrounding areas for over 100 years.

Aqwest Business Analyst, Caitlyn Pither, explains, “My role is to coordinate and lead the development, maintenance and continuous improvement of Aqwest processes and other integrated management system requirements.”

“To assist in the streamlining of our business processes we selected Promapp as our preferred Business Process Management Solution which has also helped us achieve ISO 9001 certification. This required all of our employees throughout the business to increase adoption of Promapp and use it to capture business processes. TAS was engaged to manage and support this process.”

About Aqwest

Aqwest supplies drinking water to 18,000 properties in the City of Bunbury and its surrounding areas. Sourcing fresh, underground water from the Yarragadee Aquifer, Aqwest is committed to providing its customers with sustainable, high quality, drinking water.

The Challenges

Aqwest’s main pain points were user adoption and the organisation’s process approval system, with the business analyst having to test all processes and approve in the system, and these processes further needed to be approved by Aqwest’s executives. Caitlyn explains the impact COVID had on documenting processes, “As the situation with COVID arose, a lot of employees transitioned to working from home which served to highlight the importance of Promapp.”

“Working with Troy, we were able to create a system that allowed us to document all of our processes, even allowing business champions to approve their own processes, making the system a lot more efficient and streamlined. Troy and TAS were instrumental in implementing this and allowing the organisation to work more effectively and efficiently, even remotely.”

The Objectives

• Perform a health check and determine the best approach to refresh Promapp across the business.
• Increase user engagement across the whole organisation.
• Provide a one-stop shop for all business processes.
• Provide suitable training to ensure all users understand not just how to use the Promapp tool itself, but to realise the important benefits it can deliver.
• Pivot the business to a working from home model due to COVID working restrictions.
• Allow the business to view and adapt to process changes more easily.
• Create a sense of urgency to ensure a rapid uptake in usage.

“TAS was instrumental in achieving Aqwest’s process targets. From breaking down work into manageable portions, ensuring realistic expectations, increasing system adoption and simplifying the process to ensure staff felt comfortable and encouraged coming away from workshops having achieved something.”

The Solution

Caitlyn explains, “The simplification of this process and adoption of the Promapp system was greatly attributed to Troy. Troy went through the processes within Promapp and Aqwest to better understand how to provide a tailor made solution for the organisation.”

The solution for Aqwest entailed:

• Establish and implement a change management strategy and approach to ensure long term success of the project.
• Execute health check findings by removing unnecessary processes and documents in Promapp.
• Restructure the process governance by reducing strict controls and enabling business users to become champions within their own departments, providing rights to approve and publish their own processes.
• Establish an appropriate training matrix.
• Work on migration of priority processes
• Facilitate process capture sessions with appropriate teams to ensure the entry of good quality processes in Promapp to avoid garbage in / garbage out.
• Removing perfection allowed the introduction of the 80/20 rule.
• Implementing an adaptive and innovative process culture.

The Results

• Increased individual uptake with over 27,500 process views.
• Over 500 new processes created in Promapp.
• 220 process improvement suggestions, which enabled business users to provide feedback directly to process owners and experts.
• 93% of processes are published and active within the business with 537 total processes, of which 497 are published.

Caitlyn explains Aqwest’s experience working with TAS and its Director Troy, “Troy’s training and coaching of the business champions and project lead ensured long-term success of the solution. Troy led the Aqwest team step-by-step to make the process as simple and as easy as possible for everybody involved.”

“This training contributed to the increased user adoption of Promapp across all departments. Using Promapp to adjust the approval and publishing workflows assisted in reducing bottlenecks, meaning processes can now be accessed sooner.”

“Utilising the insight and training provided by Troy from TAS, Aqwest achieved ISO9001 certification, with overall positive feedback from the team about the simplicity of finding and improving business processes using Promapp.”

Download the Aqwest Case Study

The Situation

Keystart commenced an Agile transformation in 2017, adding operational excellence practices into their ways of working in 2020. This combined way of working model has seen Keystart transform their customer and employee experiences. Good progress has been made and now Keystart is in a place of maturity where they need to take execution of their Ways of Working from good to great.

As part of this process, Keystart adopted Nintex Promapp as a tool in late 2021. The software had a relatively low uptake across the organisation. Freya Corboy, Keystart’s Manager of Agility & Change explains the situation, “Whilst it was a good tool, our people weren’t consistently aware the tool existed. There was a low understanding of why we should be using it, and low confidence in how to use it.”

“My team is accountable for tools that support our ways of working. We needed to shift Nintex Promapp from a theoretical tool to make it fit for purpose for our organisation. We needed the tool to support our people in migrating then managing their processes ongoing.”

About Keystart

Keystart is unique in the home loan market, an initiative of the WA government with a track record of over three decades of providing loans designed to help people get into their home faster by lowering the entry costs. Unlike other lenders, Keystart is a transitional lender. This means they encourage their customers to refinance with another lender, when they are ready to do so.

The Challenges

• Low uptake of Nintex Promapp across the organisation.
• Out-of-the-box settings not suitable for the organisation’s circumstance.
• Limited understanding of how to tailor the software to the organisation.
• Over governance of the tool.
• Limited investment in change management for the workforce about the tool.

The Objectives 

• Change the hearts and minds of the workforce.
• Embed the tool as the tool of choice for process mapping.
• Have a consistent approach and quality for processes across the organisation.
• Better manage operational and business risk through having documented processes.
• Achieve organisation’s strategic goals in operational excellence.

“Feedback was that the staff loved Troy’s productivity, can-do attitude and how he rolled up his sleeves to get stuff done. He has an ability to coach and explain things, where he educates in a really empowering way.

The Solution

The solution for Keystart entailed:

• Establishing and implementing a change management strategy to ensure long-term success of the project.
• Restructuring the process governance by reducing strict controls and ensuring a top-down approach from CEO and COO to frontline employees.
• Establishing an appropriate training and support matrix.
• Implementing an adaptive and innovative process culture.
• Facilitating process capture sessions with appropriate teams to ensure the entry of good quality processes in Nintex Promapp to avoid garbage in / garbage out.
• Implementing the 80/20 rule, agreeing that 80% quality is ‘good enough’ to reduce the desire for perfection and genuine opportunities for improvement being raised.

Troy from TAS joined Keystart two days a week from June 2022. The Executive Management (EM) Team identified their top 12 core processes to be captured in Nintex Promapp by June the following year. This created a simple and achievable target which all teams could achieve within their annual planning process. Whilst all teams had more than 12 processes to map, this set a goal they could achieve, build up confidence and the desire to use the tool.

Freya explains the process from there. “Troy and I met to discuss the governance, design and broader expectations around the engagement. We agreed clear objectives and introduced Troy, to the organisation. We had provided him with systems access and an organisational overview and allowed him to work directly with each EM to set objectives and create an engagement and training plan. From there the migration processes commenced.”

The Results

• 251% increase in processes being loaded.
• 236% increase in processes viewed.
• Captured and published over 320 processes in Nintex Promapp which has resulted in 287 suggestions for improvement, from only 74 processes before engaging TAS.
• Identified future opportunities for improvement in 49 processes.
• 64% increase in draft to published processes rate.
• 40% of the organisation’s critical processes are now live and being regularly updated.

“Nintex Promapp is now seen as a priority tool people are willing and wanting to use. There’s a positive process culture where processes are seen as an enabler as opposed to something we have to do. We can see that everyone in the entire organisation has logged into Nintex Promapp. 50 page instruction books have been turned into three-phase process, it is great.” Freya explains the drastic results in terms of uptake and engagement of the software.

She continues, “On a personal note, I could see Troy’s legacy of making the team feel safe and confident, resulting in them wanting to call out process improvement opportunities. People are now really proud of their contribution. Troy is super genuine, very intelligent, considerate and respectful within our organisation. He was always focused on positivity.”

“Feedback was that the staff loved Troy’s productivity, can-do attitude and how he rolled up his sleeves to get stuff done. He has an ability to coach and explain things, where he educates in a really empowering way.

Throughout the whole engagement Troy was very conscious of the legacy of the work. He was building everything with a long-term view of uptake and wanted to set up the organisation so we wouldn’t need his services later.”

Download the Keystart Case Study