The Big Issue is one of Australia’s leading social enterprises providing creative solutions to the issue of homelessness. A growing business, Big Issue recognises the need to improve its key business processes to support projected growth in magazine sales, number of programs and employees.

The Challenge

Big Issue operates in an environment of increasing demand for administration services and sales data with manual and resource intensive processes. In order to improve productivity, there was a need to review its processes and supporting information technology. A collaborative analysis of Big Issue’s business processes resulted in identification of top improvement opportunities:

• up-to-date information and administration services to support growth in sales
• integrated financial information to support growing number of programs
• accurate time-sheet management and payroll information
• a single source for key business information.

Our Strategy

Analysis of the business resulted in development of a range of options for implementation of online technologies in the short to medium period.

Expected Outcome

The implementation of recommended strategy is expected to result in significant benefits for the Big Issue, including:

• higher operational productivity
• improved data integrity – single source of truth
• improved tactical and strategic decision making
• increased visibility of operational activities
• new capability to adopt to changing information requirements.