City of Cockburn: Growth through user-friendly technology

Highlights

Challenge 

The City of Cockburn is a vibrant local government area in the southern suburbs of Perth, WA. While Cockburn boasts over 125,000 residents who require use of various community facilities, this potential was encumbered by the poor user experience of the council's bookings process for its spaces.

Bookings were largely manual and time-consuming. Council staff had to process and release invoices and bonds individually, and had to use credit notes to handle refunds, change requests and bond returns. Hours were spent following up hirers for payment. Also, staff were unable to promptly communicate to hirers updates or changes to spaces (eg. new fees or broken equipment), waiting for a third party to make these changes.

Booking a space was also cumbersome for hirers. Customers had to call the Council to find out the availability of spaces and fill in paper forms to book. This added to the administration Council staff had to deal with.

The City tried to implement a booking system to replace their manual process, but this particular software was difficult to use. Roll out time was also long and drawn out.

Solution

In 2022, the City of Cockburn put out a tender for a new booking system. Out of those in the running, the City opted for SpacetoCo and its bookings technology. Key features that made SpacetoCo stand out included:

• SpacetoCo's superior debtor management which provided a single source of truth on bookings finance
• The ability for hirers to find spaces online and see when they were available
• The ability for hirers to submit booking requests online
• Streamlined and instant payments, refunds and bonds
• The City's ability to update space information on their end

With the help of the SpacetoCo support team, the City experienced a quick and easy deployment overall (5-6 weeks) and began using the system in November 2022.

A decision was made to implement SpacetoCo for all 17 bookable zones in Hyde Park. Three months later, the City rolled out its other reserves and Halls. SpacetoCo is now used to grow and manage over 70 City of Cockburn spaces for casual, seasonal, and regular hire.The Coolbellup Hub which has two areas available for hire; the Children's Activity Area, ideal space for playgroups and children's activities, and the Public Meeting Room, perfect for meetings and small workshops.

Click here to view this space on SpacetoCo.com

The Frankland Park Sporting and Community Facility has two bookable rooms; the Function Room, perfect for large functions and fundraisers, and the Community Room, ideal for children's parties and family gatherings.

Click here to view this space on SpacetoCo.com

"It's changed our lives dramatically. Our bookings have improved, and we love that we can make changes ourselves. The system automates processes that used to take hours, freeing us to focus on more meaningful work."

— Kylie Santich (Community Venues Officer City of Cockburn)

Jeremy Hurst (SpacetoCo), Kylie Santich (City of Cockburn) and Nathan Johnston (City of Cockburn). SpacetoCo and City of Cockburn won "Best Use of Technology" award at the Parks and Leisure Australia (WA) Awards for Excellence 2024.

"We are incredibly proud of our collaboration with SpacetoCo and the tangible benefits it has brought to our community. This award is a testament to our commitment to innovation and excellence in serving our residents."

- Nathan Johnston (Recreation Services- City of Cockburn)

Outcomes

Significant growth in facility bookings - SpacetoCo's technology gave the City's hirers the ability to find spaces much easier online through SEO friendly space pages and a space-finding marketplace, as well as transparency over when spaces were available. This greater accessibility and user experience resulted in bookings growth by over 25% comparing 2022 predicted data to 2023 actual data across facilities.

Zero debt balance - SpacetoCo helped the City eliminate all debt from bookings and freed staff up from hours of chasing people up for outstanding amounts because of its debtor management system and total elimination of credit notes.

Reduction in bookings administration - SpacetoCo has made transactions fast, simple and secure. Since the technology was implemented, the City of Cockburn reported time saving reductions of up to 70 minutes per booking and a 62% reduction of calls transferred to the City's Recreation Services Team

More time for meaningful work - Because of reduced admin, the City of Cockburn are able more time to devote to activation, community outreach and engagement, and other core initiatives…once they get on top of the surge in bookings!

An award-winning partnership - In 2024, the City of Cockburn and SpacetoCo's partnership won the "Best Use of Technology" award at the WA Parks and Leisure Australia Awards for Excellence. The win celebrated the partnership's success in improving the utilisation of community recreation facilities while significantly reducing administration times for the council and its customers.

Growth through user-friendly technology

The City of Cockburn and SpacetoCo's award winning partnership is a great example of growth through user-friendly and efficient bookings processes facilitated by technology.

Hirers' ability to see live availability of spaces, make booking requests online and find venues more easily has directly grown the City's facility bookings. Because of this dots are being joined between community need for venue hire and availability in an efficient way.

SpacetoCo's streamlined processes for invoices, bonds and comms as well as its superior handling of debtors have afforded a significant reduction in bookings administration, growing the council's capacity and time to focus on other areas of development. With reduced wait times for hirers and improved efficiency from councils, community relations are being improved.

Finally, these outcomes are poised to grow the community itself. By making facilities more accessible to residents, more collaboration, creativity and connection can happen. Moreover, with the City's new found capacity from reduced bookings admin, they can provide more support and initiatives the community can enjoy.

All in all, the City is able to achieve its vision for community connection and improved quality of life in the City for residents.