The Rangatahua team, from left, Falguni Shah, Krystle Phillips, Alieta Waitoa, Atul Gupta, Cherie Cavanagh, Tumutahua Tracey Hook and Lana Maughan.

A redesign of the Rangatahua (finance) department at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa has increased capability, saved money and will create more efficient processes.

Nine months into her role as Tumutahua, Tracey Hook says the redesign of her department will also provide pathways for kaimahi to progress within the organisation.

“It’s about succession planning and providing growth opportunities for those that seek it,” she says.

It will also mean the department is less reliant on any one person holding onto the knowledge, with kaimahi undertaking ongoing training so as to be able to step into other roles as required and obtain an organisational view. 

Rangatahua includes finance, transactions (paying bills and collecting debt), procurement and distribution of student resources. 

The team is currently looking into its processes, with the aim of becoming more efficient, eliminating waste in time and processes.

“The walls of our warehouse in Rickit Road is covered in post-it notes for every process and we can then see where improvements can be made. We will continue to re-visit, review and change our post-it noted wall.” 

This “value-streaming” process involves the team studying, discussing and debating each process from start to finish to ensure the most efficient use is made of available resources.
“Process improvement is really important,” she says.

“I would like Rangatahua to be a pilot, or test case team for value streaming, providing potential for this to be duplicated in other areas of Te Wānanga o Aotearoa.”

Tracey says the challenge she has put to her team is “to take it from where we are today to ‘great’ and then from ‘great’ to ‘pretty freaking awesome’.”

As part of the redesign, Tracey has also centralised four part-time roles that were previously based in Albany to one fulltime role in Te Puna Mātauranga.  

“I have a great bunch of people here in Rangatahua who are committed to the kaupapa of TWoA. We are all extremely excited to welcome the new members to our team,” Tracey says. 

While six kaimahi have recently joined Rangatahua, 11 have left but Tracey says – with process improvement work underway -  she aims to improve delivery of services across all of our team in Rangatahua. 

The new kaimahi and their roles are: 

• Alieta Waitoa (Ngāti Porou, Ngāti Kahungunu) - Team Lead Procurement
• Krystle Phillips - (Te Āti Awa, Parihaka) - Senior Administrator National Delivery Service Procurement
• Lana Maughan (Ngāti Kahungunu) – Accountant
• Falguni Shah - Senior Accountant
• Cherie Cavanagh – Senior Accountant
• Atul Gupta – Group Financial Controller