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Businesses face Super City questions

You may think the move to incorporate the Auckland region's seven local bodies into a single super city is solely an issue of local democracy and governance that doesn't affect your business.

If you do, you'd be wrong.

Businesses will either be directly affected by the super city or by other changes to come.

While the birth of the new city is some way off, it's not too soon to develop strategies to anticipate threats and take advantage of opportunities.

You may need to consider changing the scope of your business to include the looming reality of a larger Auckland.
Some organisations, like the Auckland Chamber of Commerce, already have a region-wide focus. Others, such as the region's economic development agencies, face major change.

Auckland's EDAs are partially funded by city and district councils which will soon no longer exist. I can't see how the new super city can justify backing multiple organisations performing similar roles.

I predict the future of Auckland's enterprise agencies and economic development trusts will follow the same path as their funding councils: forced rationalisation.

The outcome of that process has the potential to impact on every business in the region.

While I'm talking rationalisation: With the move to a single city to run an area more or less the size of the entire region, why do we need to retain a regional council?

Maybe that question is next on the government's agenda, perhaps after the promised RMA reforms are bedded in.

There is a pattern that can be followed. Several decades ago local government reforms spawned larger district councils where boroughs and counties previously ruled.

Communities-of-interest changed too over time, leading to business amalgamations and new boundary definitions for operations as diverse as carriers and local newspapers.

Something similar can be expected in the wake of the new Auckland City.

If your business has "Auckland" in its name, customer perception is your area of operation covers Auckland City Council's territory. But a perception will soon develop that "Auckland" means the entire region.

Do you want to take advantage and expand your business across the region? If not, what will you communicate to customers and how will you manage their expectations?

Another option is to impose some arbitrary boundaries of your own. If you do, how can you anticipate customers' reactions?
For the likes of Telecom, the super city may mean expanding the Auckland free-calling area or justifying retention of the old boundaries (hard to do when they don't relate to the cost of providing the service).

If you do wish to expand, how will you define and price your service? Think about how the phrase "free delivery Auckland-wide" could take on a whole new meaning.

For the likes of courier companies, this may mean super-sizing same-day delivery areas.

Clearly, if your product or service distribution is currently set according to territorial local authority areas, you have some rethinking to do.

You may no longer be able to remember the reason your business followed TLA boundaries in the first place (it probably seemed logical at the time).

Even if your business does not have geographical definitions, it is possible your suppliers or customers will change their's. How will you respond?

Auckland region businesses need to ponder: Do we stay as we are to retain customer confidence in the familiar? Or do we reconfigure along super city lines to gain an advantage over competitors and position ourselves as changing with the times?