In March, the Enquire team meet with new and existing clients at our information booth at the 2014 Australian National NRM Conference in Launceston, Tasmania. The conference was organised by natural resource management organisation, NRM North, a current client of Enquire, and we had the opportunity to catch up with Bridget Tidey, Information Management Coordinator.
“It was great to put a face to the names,” said Bridget. After months of communicating regularly with the Enquire team, Bridget had the opportunity to meet some of the staff. Hosted by NRM North, the National NRM Conference proved to be a unique experience for attendees and different to the regular conference format. Ours was a bit different as we had nine different venues rather than the usual one large venue, so it was quite intimate.
“Organising events in this manner meant there was a great deal of time spent sharing information, learning from peers and making new connections across our NRM colleagues nationwide.
“Some attendees took a river cruise, while others were out at a vineyard using the conference centre there. People really got out and about the north of Tasmania,” she said.
Since December last year, Bridget Tidey has been working with NRM North as their Information Management Coordinator, where she works on integrating Enquire with their internal and external business processes.
“I was working on a software implementation project in Brisbane when the opportunity to work at NRM North (and move back to Tasmania) popped up,” explained Bridget. Bridget’s role involves implementing Microsoft SharePoint and facilitating the use of Enquire at NRM North. Her key tasks include integrating information management software such as Enquire, into NRM North’s business processes, writing procedures and training guides and providing general Enquire support.
Currently NRM North is focusing on integrating the Enquire Customer Relationship Management (CRM) module into core business processes and using the functionality to its full potential. Bridget says that aside from providing a project management solution, Enquire helps to bridge the information gap between NRM North staff and NRM North’s regional facilitators based in local government offices. The regional facilitators use the CRM to log engagement and are now initiating project applications. Using the project team management section, the system can be set up to view project involvement. “Facilitators can get a grasp of their involvement and quickly see what projects are going on in their patch,” said Bridget.
As well as project involvement, NRM North find that Enquire CRM helps to ensure transparency with their client communications. Prior to using the Enquire CRM, it was more a “person-to-person tracking of communication. “Now with Enquire, we have the ability to share organisational information more readily, before you used to keep that information to yourself,” Bridget said.
As a new user, and as part of her role, Bridget is learning how to get the most out of Enquire. “I enjoy learning new things and this role has exposed me to new challenges in an interesting sector,” said Bridget. Bridget has found that one of the main challenges to her role is helping people to accept IT/Information Management changes, in other words, the change management process. To assist the implementation, Bridget found it helpful to develop visual guides that explain the system using NRM North business processes and marrying the two within her documentation.
“Creating these documents gives a more personal spin on the system and our internal processes.” Due to the small size of the team, Bridget also spends a lot of face-to-face time with staff to assist with the implementation.
Having the opportunity to directly meet and learn from clients in a collaborative atmosphere such as the very successful 2014 NRM conference continues to be the key to growing and improving Enquire in a direction that responds to the needs of our clients.
