How Glenelg Shire Council eliminated 34 weeks of admin with automated workflows
By replacing email and manual processes with automated workflows, Glenelg Shire Council reduced admin work and improved how services are delivered across the organisation.
weeks of admin saved every month
weeks of admin eliminated each year
workflows deployed in the first 7 months
weeks of admin removed from a single process
Organisation
Glenelg Shire Council
Industry
Local Government
Region
Victoria, Australia
Organisation Size
~200 staff
Community Served
20,000+ residents
Products Used
Process Mapping →
Digital Forms →
Workflow Automation →
“Early adopters are seeing 60–70 minutes saved on every process run and they love it.”
“Automation for us is like live process mapping. We’re changing what we do in real time.”
The Organisation
Glenelg Shire Council is a regional local government authority in Victoria, Australia, serving a community of more than 20,000 residents.
Like many councils, the organisation manages a wide range of internal processes while balancing efficiency, transparency, and accountability for the communities it serves.
We spoke with Jemma Dillon, Business Analyst at Glenelg Shire Council, about how the council used Flowingly to automate workflows and improve both internal operations and service delivery.
The Challenge
Before implementing Flowingly, many of Glenelg Shire Council’s internal processes relied heavily on email, shared inboxes, and manual administration.
Although some workflows were documented using tools like Word and Visio, the actual processes still required staff to manually coordinate tasks across departments. This made it difficult to track progress and created significant administrative overhead.
At the same time, the council had recently completed a customer-needs analysis to understand how they could improve services for both residents and staff.
The results highlighted two key opportunities:
-
Improving operational efficiency across council teams
-
Delivering better digital experiences for people interacting with council services
However, implementing automation across systems would normally require significant technical resources – something the council wanted to avoid.
They needed a solution that would allow business teams themselves to design, improve, and automate workflows without relying heavily on developers.
The Solution
Glenelg Shire Council implemented Flowingly as their choice of no-code platform for process mapping, digital forms, and workflow automation.
The platform enabled the council to replace manual coordination with structured digital workflows that staff could easily follow and track.
From the start, the council rolled out automation in three-month phases, helping teams gradually adopt the platform while maintaining momentum.
One of the biggest advantages was that business teams could build and update workflows themselves, rather than relying on developers or long IT projects.
“One of the eye-openers has been being able to make changes on the fly… we’ll agree on something in a meeting and implement it straight away.”
— Jemma Dillon, Business Analyst, Glenelg Shire Council
Flowingly also allowed teams to improve processes as they were being mapped, rather than documenting workflows first and optimising them later.
Results
Flowingly had an immediate impact on the council’s operational efficiency.
Within the first seven months, the team had launched more than 30 automated workflows, significantly reducing the amount of manual administrative work required.
As automation expanded across the organisation, the improvements quickly added up.
The council now saves around seven weeks of administrative work every month, equivalent to 34 weeks of admin time eliminated each year.
One workflow alone – Kerbside Waste & Recycling Requests reduced annual administrative work from 430 hours to just 61 hours, saving more than nine weeks of staff time.
Beyond the time savings, the biggest change has been cultural. Staff across the organisation are now actively suggesting processes that could be automated.
“The very next day, we had three or four other departments asking us about automating their processes.”