At a Glance
The City of Franklin, TN was frustrated with its previous agenda and meeting management software and the vendor's customer service. They switched to CivicClerk from CivicPlus for a flexible, scalable solution.
Problem Addressed
Located in Middle Tennessee, 20 miles Southwest of Nashville, lies the City of Franklin, a rapidly growing historic community. For Angie Johnson, PHR, City of Franklin Deputy Assistant City Recorder, keeping the City of Franklin’s citizens informed and engaged requires access to scalable solutions to expedite the creation and distribution of information. However, the city was running into challenges with its existing agenda and meeting management software. Specifically, they struggled with technical problems the vendor never fixed and poor customer service.
"Eventually, we outgrew the software. It wasn’t moving, growing, or changing the way we needed, and it didn’t do what it had promised.” said Johnson."
Franklin, TN used/is using the CivicClerk agenda and meeting management solution to address this/these challenge(s).
Solution(s) Used
To begin the transition to an agenda and meeting management software that better fit the City’s needs, Johnson researched seven different products, comparing the functionality of each. The city required a robust tool that could easily scale as the city continued to grow. In addition, given previous frustrations, good customer service was top of mind in the evaluation process. So much so that Johnson did an on-site visit to CivicPlus headquarters in Manhattan, Kansas to experience the company culture and see what the company is like. Ultimately the city invested in CivicClerk because it was big enough and robust enough to do the things they needed it to do, and do much of it automatically, is intuitive enough to make it easy for staff city-wide to utilize, and according to Johnson, "we are able to trust that when we needed something, we can find a real person to help and that its people have a passion for what we do in municipal government
Outcomes
- Better technical support and customer service increases efficiency
- Saved time managing agenda preparation and approval process.
- Accessible, collaborative document sharing made it easier for multiple departments to coordinate which increased efficiency
Lessons Learned
- Evaluating software not only on the merits of the technology but also the customer service and scalability was important for the City of Franklin.
Who Should Consider?
Clerks in any size municipality looking for an automated, scalable agenda and meeting management solution.