The overall cost of the programme, which has been running for several months, is about $700,000 and has already taken more than 70 consultant days and many hundreds of staff hours.
Dr Macpherson yesterday said the results spoke for themselves.
"We are looking at a seven-figure saving every year, and in a broad context it is well worthwhile. This is not a one-off saving; it is a permanent change.
"A fair chunk of that money has come from central Government and the Road Transport Authority [for the roading section] and both are watching progress closely.
"The programme has national significance . . . and the Central Otago District Council is the pioneer in this work.
"It is likely the whole programme will be paid for by the time the last invoice is received."
Councillors this week voted to fly a consultant from Vanguard Consulting Ltd, in the UK, to Alexandra for 20 days to bring the corporate services team up to date with the Vanguard method, which is designed to improve customer service, lower costs and improve staff morale.
The programme, which has its origins in the Toyota production system for service organisations, has already been incorporated this year into the council's roading, building, planning and utilities departments.
A similar method is also being trialled in Dunedin Hospital's Emergency Department.
In January, council chief executive John Cooney warned councillors they needed to be ruthless about which significant items were funded if the council wanted to remain debt-free.
If the council did not do something about costs, ratepayers would continue to feel the impact, he said.
At this week's meeting, Cr Neil Gillespie questioned the need for a consultant to come from England for 20 days and asked if the two parts of the proposed training programme could be split.
Mr Cooney said it was cost efficient to run the programmes together, and the company might not be keen to send a consultant from Britain for only a short time.
After some discussion, councillors approved payment of $55,000 plus disbursements, estimated to be $4000 to $5000, for flights and accommodation, for the training sessions to be funded through an internal loan to be repaid from the community facilities budget in 2009-10.
The remaining $25,000 would be spread across training costs in a range of budgets
The Vanguard method
The Central Otago District Council provided figures from its "assets and contracts - roading" department as an example of possible efficiencies it can achieve using the Vanguard method. -
•Overall budget of $5.884 million for 2008-09 will reduce by 8.5%, a saving of $497,000.
•59 accounting cost centres reduced to 19.
•Seven accounting systems merged into one.
•Potentially, seven different annual contracts will be merged into a five-year contract, saving more than $500,000 in tendering, supervision and management fees; does not include savings in internal administration costs for servicing eight contracts instead of one.
