SimpliGov Helps California City Save 17,000 Hours a Month in Processing Time

One of California's largest cities was mired in manual, paper-based processes for everything from requesting time off to creating vendor contracts to retrieving employee personnel files. Forms were routinely misplaced or lost as they moved desk to desk for review, approval, and wet signatures. The city's commitment to automate came together just before COVID-19 forced a shift to remote work, and with no way to route paper documents from home, tasks began overloading staff inboxes almost immediately.

• Manual, paper-based processes served a city of over 1 million residents
• Forms were frequently misplaced or permanently lost
• Wet signatures were required for every form and contract
• The shift to remote work during COVID-19 overloaded staff inboxes with no way to route paper

• SimpliGov's digital form and workflow platform, with integrated SimpliSign electronic signature
• No-code architecture with API integration into existing applications
• A "people-process-technology" approach: the city formed a business process automation team of executives from finance, HR, and administration to prioritize which workflows to build, working with IT rather than leaving the decision to IT alone
• The first automated process was contract workflow, routing through departments, the city manager's office, and the city clerk, then to the city attorney and external vendors for e-signature

• The city has automated over 70 workflows and continues rolling out new ones
• A 60% increase in productivity through automation
• Employees outside of IT are empowered to design their own processes
• Cloud architecture eliminates the need to add, replace, or support hardware and software
• The city saves an estimated 17,000 labor hours per month across all divisions