Tasman District Council (TDC) is a unitary local authority that governs the Tasman District in the north‑west of Te Waipounamu/South Island, New Zealand. Its services span local infrastructure and regional functions, including roads and footpaths, water and wastewater, environmental monitoring, resource and building consents, waste and recycling, parks and community facilities, civil defence, and social housing. The council prides itself as a modern, future‑focused organisation aiming to create a thriving and resilient Tasman region. Integral to its success has been their transformation in digitising services.
The Challenge
A key part of managing TDC’s digital innovation programme is their approach for defining and realising benefits. To continuously improve, they sought the advice from Zen Consulting, as an independent expert to review and strengthen their benefits management approach.
Key Outcomes
Our engagement helped TDC achieve the following outcomes:
- Clear understanding of the current-state of how benefits are managed in projects and benchmarking to the industry.
- Recommended improvement actions based on project management best practices.
- Board and executive-level reporting for directing improvements.
- Coaching and guiding Project Managers, Business Analysts, Product Owners and Project Sponsors on refinements to benefits management.
“Working with Zen Consulting has helped us take a significant leap forward with our benefits management approach. Rowan Teh ‘read the room’ well and provided significant uplift support across our programme, including sponsors, business analysts, product owners and project managers. We have seen business owners and team members apply the learning immediately and we’ve made significant progress in an area we were struggling with before.” Chris Blythe (Programme Manager - Digital Services, Tasman District Council)
Our Difference
We provided key differentiators to traditional consulting approaches:
- Pragmatic rather than rigid adoption of industry best practices that enhanced, not replace, current practices.
- Highly engaging workshops via virtual sessions with clear actions and accountabilities.
- Diverse project delivery experience and relevant industry insights.
- Strong focus on stakeholder alignment to activate improvements.
Conclusion
We delivered a detailed benefits review of a large-scale digital transformation programme and provided the necessary guidance to realign projects goals to key business outcomes. This provided TDC with a strong benefits approach for their digital transformation journey.
If you’re looking for a trusted advisor for benefits management, with a difference, contact us.