Published on the 13/11/2025 | Written by Heather Wright

SAP cloud, modular design and out-of-box adoption…

Neil McGowan, general manager of technology services for Auckland Council, has what he dubs a ‘very crude’ measure for the success of his teams initiatives. “How much is my inbox blowing up from unhappy customers?”

The Council is overhauling its technology architecture to deliver greater agility and customer-centric services, moving away from monolithic, often highly customised systems, towards a composable model anchored by SAP and complemented by a wider range of vendors and out-of-the-box solutions.

“Sometimes, it is useful to ask the right question and see if other people have solved it.”

The council’s technology stack dates back to its formation through the amalgamation of eight councils 15 years ago. By 2023, when McGowan joined, Auckland Council was coming out of the Covid response and looking at how to set itself up for the future ‘a little better’ – including with its now aging technology which had been in place 10-12 years, McGowan told iStart.

It was, he says, an opportunity to look at what did, and didn’t make sense and take the opportunity to do more with less.

The governing body’s interest in technology provided momentum. “It was a compelling moment and a bit of a call to arms,” McGowan says.

The Council developed a three-tier strategy focused on customer centricity, data-driven decision-making and agility.

“It was important we anchored around putting the focus back on the customer, doing right by citizens, ratepayers, visitors to the city, and using the technology opportunity to anchor around that was something we were quite keen to do.”

Composing a new future

The Council’s diverse operations and multiple council-controlled organisations (CCOs), including Auckland Transport and Watercare Services, made a one-size-fits-all approach untenable.

“I’ve never been a massive subscriber of all you can eat,” McGowan says. “We have to have the ability to solve problems for the business on technology that makes the most sense.”

That thinking has seen McGowan and his team pursue a composable architecture strategy, enabling the council to integrate best-of-breed solutions around its SAP core, blending in excellence or strong capabilities from some of Auckland Council’s other organisations. “Where it makes sense we might want to drop in a different CRM or supplier or contracts management system,” he says. “Our previous architecture and commercial set up wasn’t really conducive to allowing us to do that.”

Composability isn’t easy, however. “It’s actually really difficult to stitch them together,” McGowan admits. “You have got to have a really, really strong strategy around integration and data, because if you don’t get those foundations right, you can just connect a lot of disparate and problematic systems together.”

AI is already influencing strategy. “Machines will learn how to talk to one another far better than the humans can orchestrate today,” he says. “That allows us to get over the hump of some of those complexities you have when you are modular.”

Increasing sophisticating in the ability of offerings to talk to each other is already being seen and McGowan is keen to capitalise on the hard work already done by tech companies. “They’ve done the heavy lifting. I think the choices we are making in terms of deliberately picking things we know will be a little less complicated is starting to pay some dividends.”

SAP remains at the core. “There is not really any compelling reason to shift away from it, but certainly somethings that were in the ecosystem could be better and it didn’t make sense to carry on in some areas.”

In mid-2024 the council announced it had created a new commercial arrangement with SAP which sees the council moving to SAP Rise, from S/4 Hana. (Expected savings? $42.1 million over seven years.)

“That was the catalyst for us then saying now we have the flexibility and choice, how do we make the best use of it?”

Since then, the organisation has been pivoting around putting in the foundation and framework for that modular architecture.

It recently went to market for ‘a suite of certified SAP service providers’.

“That’s not necessarily to support an SAP transformation,” McGowan says. “It was more to support the capability from the skills and people perspective, if we had to take on additional workload or legislation and had to move in a hurry – would we have the capability around it? So it was making sure we had the right fit.”

He says the intention is to hone back on core capability and have some core functions remaining in SAP while the Council figures out the rest of its ecosystem and architecture journey.

Out-of-the-box adoption

McGowan is also keen to embrace out-of-the-box solutions to accelerate delivery and reduce complexity.

“Part of our strategy is taking out-of-the-box, and adopting and adapting ourselves – not customising things, which I think we had a bit of a legacy of doing in some spaces,” he says. “And the second you get into that customised world, it makes upgrades difficult, it makes moving between things a lot more challenging.

“It’s a good thing in our organisation to have a little bit of complexity because it keeps it really interesting, and in some spaces the customisation is required because there wasn’t the sophistication in some of the capabilities off-the-shelf.”

But advances in technology mean there are plenty more opportunities for the organisation to streamline processes using off-the-shelf offerings.

“There is a bit of refactoring of some business processes to enable that and that come from confidence in the capabilities coming out of the box.”

The Council is investing in Salesforce for CRM and field services and Adobe Experience Manager for digital front-end web properties. It’s also currently implementing WorkDay and Datacom’s DataPay services for HR and payroll.

For McGowan, the logic is simple: Tech companies invest millions, sometimes billions, into building robust, feature-rich offerings. Taking solutions straight out of the box enables the council to ‘go straight to the outcome’.

“My view is in some spaces it pays to be a genuine authentic Kiwi and have a go at a few things, and sometimes you can create competitive advantage.

“But sometimes, it is useful to ask the right question and see if other people have solved it.”

That mindset is shaping the Council’s partner strategy. While its building its own capabilities, it’s also looking to deepen relationships with larger partners to see how they can help.

“There is some advantage in having some different conversations and seeing what is being solved by some of these big players in the market and then seeing if there is anything being done domestically that offers the opportunity to solve problems and collaborate together.”

The AI question

The Council is taking a measured approach to AI. “We have to be sensitive to it because trust and confidence is pretty paramount to the information and systems we are caretakers of,” McGowan explains. While there are efficiency gains to be had – though not always ‘what it says on the tin’, he notes – the priority is ensuring AI is well-trained, uses quality data and operates securely.

Pilots and proof of values are already underway. Two directors are sponsoring an approach and a paper, which McGowan expects will inform the direction the council takes.

Auckland Council’s transformation is far from complete – McGowan estimates the council is only about one-third to halfway through. For those customers at the centre of the change, he says the changes will show up as better capabilities being offered, rationalisation of services, consolidating experiences for customers, being able to offer things in faster and better formats and streamlining processes in the back end.

“There are lots of capabilities that I think once brought to light will help us really lean into the business to make it smarter, more effective and an easier to navigate environment,” he says.

“I see my job as creating the toolkit or the capabilities for others to build on top. I sometimes get the job of doing the heavy lifting and the things beneath the covers so others can stand on my shoulders and do cool things for Aucklanders and customers.”

And, if it all goes to plan, McGowan hopes the ultimate measure of success will be silence, with his inbox staying blissfully quiet – proof that the heavy lifting beneath the covers is paying off.