Feature Story
In our experience, without clear direction and adequate resourcing it is left up to the staff at “the coalface” to decide what levels of service should be provided given the resourcing they have. A well-developed service catalogue allows Council to make informed decisions on desired service levels. Once these levels are agreed, staff can be provided with the tools and resources to deliver the desired services, and performance can be measured against clear targets.
Key positive outcomes of a service level review are:
Aligning service levels with:
Growth
Community expectations
Financial imperatives
Effective asset management.
Ensuring financial sustainability through effective budgeting
Providing Council with the capacity to determine service levels.
At Mead Perry Group, we believe a structured approach to establishing a service catalogue is essential for timely project delivery. We are committed to enhancing organisational performance and service delivery.
A quality service catalogue guides organisational activity, clarifies deliverables, ensures accountability, and supports effective budgeting. Consequently, this process has to be much more than getting staff to fill out a spreadsheet of what they do and combining that data into a “Service Catalogue”. Delivering a project of this type involves conducting a structured engagement with staff from all functional areas to map “current state” services and identify any improvement opportunities. We then analyse the findings and further research to establish what staff consider to be an ideal “future state” which will allow Management and ultimately Council to decide on and resource desired service levels.
In our experience, both staff and Councillors wish to determine the level of agreed and adequately resourced service standards because:
It provides staff with clear direction and adequate resourcing.
Council is able to have a tangible influence on delivering what they want for the Community and what the Community can afford.
Last pieces of advice.
Start small – Take the journey by workgroup/functional area.
Don’t expect perfection first time around – Perfection will come with time and continued enhancement of the catalogue.
