Public Spectrum has caught up with Michelle Laybutt, the General Manager Sales Operations, Business Platforms at Datacom, for her insights on the uptake of digital within the public sector.
The pandemic has brought about big changes throughout multiple sectors, and even more so within the public sector. With social distancing greatly limiting interactions, government organisations have resorted to using digital to keep their services available to the public while improving them to fit the current trends within society.
Michelle Laybutt has been working in the IT industry for the last 30+ years in selling, implementing and post-sale support. She has worked across a range of software, not limited to Accpac/Sage, Netsuite/Oracle, Microsoft AX and D365.
She has also been a manager at PWC, technical solutions consultant at Microsoft for Finance and Operations as well at Netsuite/Oracle. She was a VP for an International Company doing IFRIS 16 accounting.
In this interview, Michelle discusses the digital changes within the public sector and how Datacom has been able to help its clients in the shift to digital.
What are the recent changes you’ve seen in the public sector in relation to the use of digital and IT services?
Due to the Covid pandemic in Australia, we’ve seen a high degree of rapid digitisation, which has enabled many businesses to continue functioning through the crisis and meeting the needs of their customers. The public sector has seen the same shift and many organisations have become more reliant on flexible SAAS offerings – with more and more staff working from home this has become a critical requirement to ensure that BAU can continue.
The adoption of a reliable and secure service was critical to this change being successful and we’ve seen agencies really commit to reworking their digital strategy, in much shorter timeframes. This has forced many public sector organisations to change internal processes to enable the adoption of software and services in a far more agile manner.
Governments have prioritised budget – and often internal support too – to hasten their digital journeys, in contrast to the rollout of digital initiatives and transformation in the past which was often much slower and more unwieldy.
Overall, although it has been a challenging time, the changes we’ve seen in the public sector’s adoption of digital products and services are very positive for the public sector’s employees and the people they serve.
How has Datacom helped with the transition of agencies using more digital services to reach out to their customers?
Datacom is working with a number of agencies to shift their on-premise software to the cloud. Enabling the adoption of the cloud (SAAS) footprint provides a strong foundation to enable staff to work remotely, seamlessly and with access to all the same tools and resources as in a traditional office setting.
By ensuring remote teams have seamless access, these changes are also ensuring that public sector organisations can serve their customers and communities without disruption – the pandemic was the catalyst for this shift but the resilience this has achieved for public sector organisations is a major asset. As well as achieving better experiences for staff and customers, the shift to the cloud is also delivering efficiencies and productivity gains through ‘anywhere anytime’ access to data.
Datacom’s customers have really relied on our teams for speed, flexibility and responsiveness throughout the pandemic and it’s been a privilege to work with state and federal government agencies to support them and enable them to be responsive to the needs of Australians. Giving these agencies access to real-time information has also enabled them to better identify and meet the most pressing needs.
What were the challenges you’ve faced while working for public sector agencies and how were you able to solve them?
Key challenges the sector was facing revolved around:
- Old, on-premise legacy systems
- Inefficient business processes including manual processes that acted as a barrier to being able to modernise and evolve quickly
- Accuracy and visibility of near real-time data for intelligent business insights were lacking, meaning decisions were being slowed down or relied on information that did not reflect the true position of the organisation or its customers
- Global supply chain issues.
One of the differences in the context of the pandemic was the urgency and buy-in from the agencies that these digital changes – and in some cases digital transformations – had to happen. To deal with the challenges we worked incredibly closely with the agencies’ internal teams, we listened to what they needed and were able to provide advice on the steps that were needed to achieve their goals.
Decisions about legacy systems and existing processes that might once have really slowed down a project were dealt with in a really collaborative way. In terms of global supply chain issues, our teams were very successful in their forward-planning and we were able to pre-empt major shortages in the supply of the hardware for our public sector customers – without that forward-planning, the delays could have had catastrophic consequences.
What are your plans for aiding Datacom with its goals of connecting agencies to its audiences via technology?
We have a talented, experienced team with a wide range of technical and strategic knowledge to help agencies make good decisions about the technology platforms and solutions that will help them serve their customers and communities now and in the future.
One of our greatest strengths as a homegrown ANZ technology partner is that we understand the local environment and people – we are able to bring together the best technology from global partners like Microsoft, with our knowledge of local customers and their needs, to build tailored solutions.
Over the past couple of years, the public sector has had to do a huge amount of work to help their customers and communities through some really challenging times, and for Datacom it’s been a huge privilege to act as a trusted local tech partner that could help them evolve quickly and find new ways of working.
Our solutions for the sector have spanned back-end and customer-facing projects but all of them have shown our commitment to developing solutions that deliver better, more connected experiences for employees and customers.