The award-winning Phillip Island Nature Park encompasses the Penguin Parade, Koala Conservation Centre, Nobbies Centre and the Churchill Island Heritage Farm.

The Challenge

Chief Executive Officer, Matthew Jackson runs an organisation that effectively ‘never closes’ and one that has high expectations of information technology (IT) as he relies on it to understand and meet the needs of visitors to the Nature Park’s attractions.

He explains, ‘During our peak period we can have over 3,000 visitors to the Penguin Parade each night and we often work until 1 am so an IT provider that understands the nature of our business and is available when we need them is vital’.

Catherine Basterfield, Financial Controller at the Nature Park adds, ‘We are a fast moving organisation and our IT partner needs to move quickly with us’.

Also, because the Nature Park operates from multiple sites, it is critical that their IT provider be able to support this arrangement in a timely manner, particularly for core systems like ticketing, retail and food and beverage.

The Process

Several years ago, the Nature Park’s systems were relatively antiquated and provided by different partners in a segregated arrangement. Now, PurpleC provide a single point for the majority of the Nature Park’s technology solutions and work on future developments with them. Operating effectively as the Nature Park’s IT department, they run and support their IT environment (which includes 200 networked computers) under a service level agreement model called Client Connect.

Catherine has found PurpleC to be accommodating. The business needs of the Nature Park are often specific so ‘off the shelf’ solutions need to be modified for them.

‘As an example, they adapted our retail system to enable us to retrieve valuable demographic and economic data about our customers. In a very timely manner, we can find out how many visitors we had at each site, where they came from and revenue figures’.

Matthew says that given the resources usually available to a regionally based organisation and the complex IT needs of the Nature Park, ‘PurpleC always endeavour to do their best to achieve our challenging standards’.

The Result

As well as being a cost-effective arrangement for the Nature Park, having PurpleC as their key IT provider means they have a ready-made expert that understands their business. For example, when the Nature Park needed software to manage hiring out of MP4 players to provide quality information to visitors, PurpleC could develop it for them.

Another example is the ‘Penguin Countdown’ screen which informs visitors of how much time they have to enjoy the retail store or café before the main event – the dusk arrival of the Little Penguins.