Situated in northern Tasmania, Latrobe Council supports the local community with a range of services spanning infrastructure and asset management, waste and recycling, emergency management and local planning. 

Another sometimes overlooked service provided by the council team is venue hire, which enables local people and community groups to book a range of physical spaces and modern facilities to support local events and activities.

Latrobe Council was facing various challenges in the management of its venue hire services. When taking bookings for the use of its facilities – including halls, meeting rooms, and sports venues – the process often proved complex and time-consuming. New developments at Camp Banksia also meant there was a need for a booking system that would enable members of the community to more efficiently book the new spaces.   

Legacy systems in need of streamlining and efficiency

Both Latrobe Council and Camp Banksia were taking community bookings via email calendars – Outlook and Google Calendar. The process was highly manual and presented a range of frustrating issues. 

Banksia Facility Supervisor, Taylah Richardson, says employees were finding the system challenging and time-consuming.

“The calendar system provided an unclear overview of the bookings. This meant we couldn’t easily see what facilities where being booked and when. There was also no self-service option for community members to make bookings in their own time.”

Making bookings through the legacy system required community members to either call the council team or Camp Banksia. The manual process could then take employees 30-45 minutes for a single booking. This involved various complicated steps, a long paper trail, unnecessary people and resources, and plenty of room for human error. 

“It was extremely time-consuming for employees to work out fees, bonds and complete the manual operation of refunds. The system had many avenues for error with the possibility for a booking to be deleted at the click of a button,” says Taylah.  

Faster booking processes, fewer errors

Latrobe Council and Camp Banksia needed an efficient system that would reduce administrative time for employees while allowing members of the community to make bookings in a user-friendly way.

Latrobe Council implemented Datacom’s Datascape cloud-based software platform for bookings. Datascape Bookings is a streamlined booking system that simplifies the whole process, from finding facilities to making reservations, agreeing to terms and conditions, and making payments. 

The implementation of Bookings resulted in a streamlining of services and significant reductions in administrative work for Latrobe Council and the Camp Banksia team. 

“The feedback we’ve received is that the processes are significantly faster and more streamlined. After ironing out some creases, Datascape now effectively works to eliminate all the challenges employees were facing,” says Taylah.

“With Bookings, real-time information means there’s now a visual view of bookings, removing the chances of human error and duplications. The process is also significantly faster. While the previous process could take three-quarters of an hour, that’s been reduced to just around two minutes.” 

Payments have been streamlined too. Fees are applied automatically at the time of booking which enables consistency and efficiency for those making bookings. Providing refunds is now also much simpler because the process is conducted through one system with no need for manual processes.

Working with the Datacom team enabled the implementation process to run smoothly.

“With fortnightly meetings and key contacts we could touch base with, I felt confident we could get a response when we needed one and felt informed throughout the process. Datacom also prompted us to consider things we may not otherwise have, which was useful.”

Helping councils implement a single system that enables them to “effortlessly handle facility bookings from start finish” is the aim for Datascape Bookings, according to the Datacom team that worked on the project.

“With Datascape Bookings in place the aim is hassle-free reservations using a simple system that empowers users – customers and council teams – to easily check availability, secure council facilities and spaces, and manage booking at their convenience. Streamlining the process, greater automation and the real-time availability of information in the system makes it a much better experience for users and reduces the chance of errors or booking complications.”  

Increasing community access to Council facilities

The Bookings platform has not only positively impacted Latrobe Council and Camp Banksia but also had a wider impact on the community. The Datascape software enables members of the public to easily go online and book facilities in their own time. 

“We’ve seen an increase in casual hirers who have jumped on and booked the facilities for the first time. Various people and organisations who didn’t previously know our spaces existed have discovered us and made bookings. We’ve seen an uptick in meeting room hires in particular.” 

Now that community members are empowered to access the Bookings feature online, they don’t need to call the council team during opening hours and they have more visibility of the availability of facilities. This is reflected in the reduction in calls the council is receiving regarding bookings – which has provided another time-saver for workers. 

Latrobe’s adoption of the Datascape offering shows the innovative power that SaaS solutions can have on local governments – benefiting not just the employees, but importantly, the wider community too.   

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