Two words, ‘Project Unify’, lie behind Horowhenua District Council’s decision to upgrade its ageing and unsupported internet platform. An upgrade was a prerequisite if the council was to pursue this strategy, which is to align the council’s business and corporate systems. The ultimate aim is to deliver much better customer service – both internally and externally – via the web.

The council looked to the capabilities of the EPiServer platform after seeing a “working solution” at an Intergen-hosted EPiServer Day, where a number of users, including other district councils were on hand. Intergen is the implementer for EPiServer.

Interactive
“It was vital that we chose the right platform for our website to enable the new systems to be integrated with it for eBusiness,” says Janet Greig, Horowhenua’s IT manager.

“Our vision is to be much more interactive with our customers, ratepayers and the general public.”

Website with attitude
Going beyond the usual limitations of an older website, Horowhenua wanted a toolset-enabled website that would allow for greater flexibility and control, with the ability to build, create and manipulate content as desired – without being constrained by templates or the need to re-visit developers.

When Intergen showed the council the freedom inherent in EPiServer Composer, Horowhenua was sold. Web administrator Joanna Cooney describes the difference when compared with other offerings.

“EPiServer with Composer came across as a brilliant product. As a hands-on tool, it’s so flexible to use – you drive it, not the other way around. It’s easy to change layouts, with the result that our website is fresher, cleaner and more vibrant. It has many authors, which means it’s easy for staff to use, and we can be fully consistent with our layout and styles.

“Composer gives us immense control. There are so many areas where it performs – from distributed authoring, to good version control, and it assists us with compliance with the Public Records Act and web standards. EPiServer has such extensive standard functions out of the box.”

Popular solution
Intergen has partnered on EPiServer solutions with several regional and district councils throughout New Zealand.

In addition, when an idea has been successful, the thinking has been: let’s share the knowledge. For example, the knowledge behind Horowhenua building its cemetery search database is based on that garnered from other councils which have worked with Intergen.

Sharing templates is easy with EPiServer, and Horowhenua, in turn, is happy to work with other councils and share templates and its user knowledge.

Better customer service, through more online services, is another area of collaboration between Intergen and Horowhenua. Cooney says the council plans to use EPiServer to enable greater use of web services.

“Online services we plan to deliver in the future include enquiries, payments for rates and water, building consents, resource lodgments, property certificates and requests. It’s all about making information more readily available to our community, rate-payers and business partners.”

“We feel we’ve invested in a future-proof solution. We know it’s supported and that we have the ability to build even greater service offerings on it. Above all, we’re firmly on the ‘unified path’ we are seeking to pursue for our total system,” says Cooney.

ENGINE ROOM:
>> EPiServer 5 and EPiServer Composer





> Intergen
Wayne Forgesson | Director of Marketing
P: 04 472 2021
E: wayne.forgesson@intergen.co.nz
W: www.intergen.co.nz






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