Formlify for Australian Local Government

Your organisation

You are the General Manager, Human Resources Manager or IT Manager of a Local Government Authority (LGA or Local Council) in Australia. Your council might be one of many in a major city or a single council in a regional centre. You serve over 30,000 customers who include rate-paying individuals and a variety of businesses.

Your council is responsible for management of parks and reserves to halls, sporting facilities and libraries. You employ a variety of staff, from admin and clerical, to environmental officers, drivers, maintenance workers, youth workers, inspectors, engineers, planners and librarians.

Normal operation includes many forms, from Development Applications, 149 and 603 certificates, to inspections and reports, from internal policies like social media and mobile phone use, to onboarding new staff, leave applications and terminations. Most of your forms are currently paper-based.

Your challenges

With pervasive use of online services like Amazon, your customers have become more demanding, expecting faster, easier to use and more accessible services. You want to help them but are constrained by budgets and manual processes and systems.

Council operation is controlled by strict compliance, governance and privacy regulations, which are increasing in number and complexity. You want to be sure of adherence but it’s becoming more expensive and time-consuming.

You’d like your staff to show initiative and improve efficiencies and service, but you don’t want to compromise compliance or existing protocols.

Your IT team is under-staffed and has a limited budget. You think that online forms could fix some of your challenges. Yet, you’re worried about integration with your Electronic Document Management System (EDMS), and with other business management and legacy systems, and the risk of increasing IT complexity and cost.

Your options

If these are your challenges, you may have found these four possible solutions:

1. Improve your manual systems
This will be low cost but, if your form systems remain largely paper-based, it wont improve service or efficiency. It won’t be easy to ensure compliance either, as paper-based systems are more prone to human error. You may be able to make some changes around the edges, but these will have limited impact overall.
This is the option for you if change is neither important nor urgent right now.

2. Use a simple form builder
These are free or low cost online systems that let you build simple ‘free-form’ forms. They include a number of field types and features, but they’re not designed for complex applications. They’re not conditional or responsive, they don’t enable control of design, approval or publication, and they probably won’t integrate with your other business management systems. You may find you save a little time, but the full benefits of automated online forms may still be elusive. This is the option for you if functionality, value and peace of mind are key drivers.

3. Use a high end, enterprise solution
These are comprehensive web solutions, ideally suited to organisations with enterprise-level budgets. Each step has a price tag, from initial purchase to extra forms and enabling compliance functionality. You may also find that providers are based overseas, so compliance with Australian regulations may not be possible nor hosting your data in Australia, nor integration with legacy systems or non-mainstream business systems. This is the option for you if functionality, value and peace of mind are key drivers.

4. Use a feature-rich, purpose-built solution
These are smart form builders designed for any-sized organisations: they have built-in workflows and conditional logic and they’re cost-effective to buy and easy to use. The smartest ones are integrated with popular EDMSs and can be easily integrated with other business systems. Attractive to councils are form-builders designed, hosted and supported in Australia, so compliance with Australian regulations, data security and ongoing support are assured. This is the option for you if functionality, value and peace of mind are key drivers.

How Formlify can help your Council

Formlify is a purpose-built, smart web form builder from CIBIS, an Australian leader in business management software development for over two decades. Formlify was designed to deliver advanced enterprise-grade functionality for Australian organisations, without the enterprise price tag. For councils, Formlify provides:

Ease and control for your staff:

Intuitive ‘drag and drop’ form creation, without the need for coding knowledge or help from IT
Unlimited fields, statuses, logic flows and vertical layouts, including your corporate branding
Advanced workflows linked to forms, giving you infinite control, variety and flexibility
Conditional logic so staff or customers see simpler forms, with only fields relevant to them
Notification of changes to forms or action required by staff, sent by email based on workflows

Convenience and confidence for your customers:

Forms that are attractive, intuitive, and easy and fast to fill
Ability to partially fill forms via iOS or Android smart device, and return later to complete them
Ability to add images, notes or signatures to your forms, so you can complete the picture
Marking of sections as confidential or redacted (such as credit card details) so privacy is preserved and PII/PCI requirements are met
Integration with your payment gateway so they can pay without having to visit Council.

Control and peace of mind for your IT and management teams:

Integration with EDMS, API integration with other business systems, custom app for legacy systems
Workflows that make compliance automatic and assured
Value for money, with no limit to forms published; you are only charged for forms received
Peace of mind knowing that design, hosting and support is by a trusted, long term, local provider
Compliant with Australian Privacy Principles and GDPR
An easy first step towards Digital Transformation for your organisation.

If your Council is still largely paper-based and you seek an advanced, flexible, cost-effective online form builder which will streamline operations now and adapt to change, contact CIBIS.