About — Simply Now

A partner in transformation,
not another IT vendor.

Software vendors often sell you a tool and move on to the next sale. We do something different: we transform how your council works. Staying with you; refining, extending and supporting it for the long haul.

Here's the people behind that, the 14 years that shaped it, and the team that makes it happen for you.

We understand the pressures from within councils.

The platform is built by Grant Schuster — a former council General Manager of Corporate and Community Services, with 14 years inside Victorian local government before founding Simply Now full-time. Aaron van Egmond brings it to life in your council, with 12 years as chief executive of two councils behind him. Between them they have sat in most of the chairs around your executive table, and felt the pressure in every one.

Most consultants have done one of these jobs. Some have done two. Doing all three — at depth, in the same career — is what produces the process intelligence in every Simply Now function, and the coaching that makes it land. The "what should happen next" isn't theoretical. It's been tested with real staff, real councillors and real audit committees — built for Grant's own council first.

Sat in the chair. Felt the pressure. Built the partnership we wished every council had.

Creating a platform that enabled a new way of working.

2015 · Hepburn Shire Council

Like most councils, Hepburn ran on a big-box, all-in-one system — finance, assets, purchasing, building, planning, environmental health, and, disastrously, customer requests. We called it "a database on a screen": a maze of pages where nobody could tell what they needed to do, how to update it, or what was even outstanding. So Grant built something different — a minimal CRM that just made it easy: record the who, what and where of each request, assign it to the right officer, and let them update, prioritise, reassign and close it, with resident communications, notifications and escalations built in. For the first time, managers and executives could see what their teams were working on, had outstanding, and had done. We called it Closing the Loop.

It grew, process by process

Over the next two years it spread well beyond customer requests — knowledge and FAQs (there from day one, so every request routed straight to the right person), project planning and reporting, Council Plan priorities, OHS actions, the policy register and reviews, staff performance plans, even issuing tip vouchers to residents. One connected way of working, expanding wherever the next pain was.

2019 · Hobsons Bay City Council

The platform reached its next generation — knowledge, requests, projects, performance plans, governance actions and policies, configured to Hobsons Bay's own priorities, all underpinned by aligning people, positions and responsibilities in a single action-management platform. The breakthrough was a dynamic dashboard that shows every user, supervisor and manager what's coming up, what's due next and what's outstanding — turning priority-setting into a real-time, collaborative conversation. That dashboard is now at the heart of the Performance Enabler.

2026 · The third generation

The first two versions delivered real outcomes for Hepburn and Hobsons Bay — but they ran on a proprietary third-party platform, with its own database, and with security and configuration sitting outside the council's control. Development and testing even happened in the live environment. We always wanted to fix that. So we have: the entire platform has been rebuilt natively in Azure, Power Platform and Entra ID, with proper development and test environments — the same proven processes and outcomes, now fully inside the security and governance your council already controls.

Our people.

Simply Now is led by three people who each have over 20 years' experience transforming organisations, technology and how people work. We are supported by Australian-based team members and associates. Together we have one passion: helping your people achieve great things for their community.

Grant Schuster

Founder and Director · System Architect and AI Lead

Melbourne, Victoria

Grant brings clients' visions of easier, faster and better ways of working to life through the technology that enables it. He leads Simply Now and heads up solution architecture, technology and AI design. He has a 20+ year track record for designing and building business and technology systems that make it easy and empowering for everyone using them. With 14 years management, executive and transformation experience within councils, as well as seven years consulting with EY, Grant lives and breathes transformation.

Aaron van Egmond

Strategic Transformation Lead

Sunshine Coast, Queensland

Aaron helps clients identify their strategic transformation priorities and implement the actions that achieve them. As chief executive of two councils between 2012 and 2024, he has a proven track record of improving service delivery, increasing efficiency, enhancing community engagement and empowering teams to deliver together.

Tina Taylor

Client Success and Insights Lead

Sydney, New South Wales

Tina makes sure the outcomes a client signed up for are the outcomes they get. She builds close, trusted relationships with the people doing the work, stays hands-on through delivery, and remains their point of contact long after go-live. She has a 20+ year track record of turning operational data into the measures leaders actually use for decision making, including nine years at Macquarie Group.

We add people as we add councils to sustainably deliver the quality of system and standard of service that we pride ourselves on. So you get genuine attention now, and a team that scales sustainably alongside you, rather than a vendor stretched thin across too many clients.

And we've backed that commitment with our own investment: rebuilding the platform natively in Microsoft for the decades ahead, with an ambitious roadmap and a support team that understands the operational realities you face. We know from lived experience that this is what helps staff deliver more for their community, guided by a system they love to use. We're here for 2026, and for 2036 and beyond — your success is the priority, today and for the long haul.

What it's like to work with Simply Now.

“

Grant has process improvement built into his DNA. The way he understands process and builds systems that guide users is second-to-none — I've never used a system that gave me better visibility or oversight in my role as Corporate Services Director. If you're looking to genuinely transform how your council operates, I cannot recommend Grant highly enough.

Andrew McLeodFormer Director of Corporate Services, Hobsons Bay City Council