The Challenge

Before Flowingly, many of Glenelg’s internal processes ran on email, shared inboxes, and manual coordination. Some workflows had been roughly documented in Word and Visio, but the processes themselves still relied on staff chasing things across departments with no clear visibility of where anything was at.

The council had also run a customer-needs analysis that highlighted a strong desire from both residents and staff for improved efficiency and better digital experiences when interacting with council services.

“Automation for us is like live process mapping. We’re changing what we do in real-time, rather than creating some aspirational idea of what we should be doing.”
— Jemma Dillon, Business Analyst

The ambition was clear, but as a smaller council, they needed to be realistic about resources. Deep pockets and developer teams weren’t an option. They needed a platform that business teams could own and drive themselves, one that could turn legacy processes into proper digital experiences without long IT projects.

The team also wanted to measure the impact of any improvements, but had no way of knowing how long a request actually took to process. As part of their planning, they got teams to self-report how long manual processes were taking so they’d have a baseline to measure against.

The Solution

Glenelg chose Flowingly as their no-code platform for process mapping, digital forms, and workflow automation – bringing all three together in one tool that business teams could use without relying on developers.

The council rolled out automation in three-month phases, launching around 15 new automated processes each quarter. This kept momentum up across the organisation without overwhelming teams.

One of the biggest shifts was speed of change. Instead of documenting processes and optimising them later, the team could improve workflows in real time, making changes on the spot as they were identified.

“One of the eye-openers has been being able to make changes on the fly. We’ll be sitting in a meeting and say ‘let’s make that change right now’ – and we’ll go make it in front of everyone. No drawn-out briefs, no communication breakdowns.”
— Jemma Dillon, Business Analyst, Glenelg Shire Council

The no-code, frontline-led approach also meant that process improvement wasn’t siloed in IT. Teams across the organisation could see, follow, and contribute to how their own workflows were built and refined.

Results

Within seven months, the council had launched more than 30 automated workflows – roughly one per week, and the time savings added up fast.

The council now saves around seven weeks of administrative work every month, equivalent to 34 weeks of admin time eliminated per year. One workflow alone – Kerbside Waste & Recycling Requests, went from 430 hours of annual admin down to just 61 hours, saving more than nine weeks of staff time on a single process.

“Early adopters are seeing 60-70 minutes saved on every process run and they love it.”
— Jemma Dillon, Business Analyst, Glenelg Shire Council

But the biggest result isn’t on a spreadsheet. Staff across the organisation are now actively coming forward with processes they want to automate – without being asked.

“We haven’t had to look for processes to automate. People are coming to us with them.”
— Jemma Dillon, Business Analyst, Glenelg Shire Council

With automation continuing to roll out in quarterly phases, the team expects to free up over 200 weeks of admin time annually once all processes are live. The project also earned Glenelg a top-three finish at the MAV Tech Awards in the employee excellence category.

As Jemma puts it: “We’re really satisfied, both in terms of justifying the idea itself and the execution of that idea.”