“We knew everyone had to change the way they worked and change their business processes, and our leaders had to support that because they understood it was worth it,” he says. “Looking back on the project now, I see that as a pivotal moment because every time the project’s schedule was at risk or we encountered a potential obstacle, we went back to those business leaders and worked together to work out a solution to overcome the hurdle. I made it clear that IT was not going to lead this project if the business wasn’t fully behind what we were doing. We agreed that any effort to drive change had to be a business project, not an IT project, and that we would drive it together as partners.”

Carritt says he and his team put a lot of effort into change management. But, as he discovered, that doesn’t always lead to positive results. They offered a lot of training and support before launch, but attendance was limited. “We thought we had communicated the upcoming process changes fairly well, but looking back, we didn’t understand why that was important,” he says. To fill the knowledge gap on changeover day, they developed quick guides, produced training manuals, and even held additional sessions during and after the changeover, which were far better attended. And again, he reached out to business leaders and made sure they pushed their teams to book time to attend training.

In addition to cost and efficiency savings, a positive outcome of the project was that Infrastructure NSW can now get more out of its key technology investments. “We already spend a significant amount on 365, so we want to get the maximum benefit from that spend by improving the organisation’s ability to use it intelligently,” he says. “That’s a big win for us. It’s about making better use of fewer systems.”