Despite surging demand, the county has maintained an impressive 48-hour permit turnaround time thanks to time-saving automation and an online customer portal.

Some know Athens-Clarke County, Georgia, as the home of the Georgia Bulldogs college football team, while others know it for its vibrant music scene. Both have fueled a development boom, causing a rise in demand for short-term rentals and student housing. Even single-family homes are more commonly becoming duplexes to support the increase in population.

The Challenge

Before implementing Clariti Enterprise, the county relied on a primarily paper-based system which couldn’t scale with the uptick in application volume. “There’s a lot of ‘cooks in the kitchen’ to build just one building,” said System Administrator, Michael Carnes. “For one application, you used to have people travelling between different buildings and even across the city to drop off plans and project files, which was both inconvenient and time-consuming for everyone involved.” 

There was no online portal for submissions, permits were stored in paper folders, and because almost everything was done manually, the various departments involved in development approvals found it challenging to coordinate reviews and stay aligned.

The Solution

Clariti’s Enterprise permitting software was the flexible, cloud-based solution the county needed to easily scale to meet demand. It offered the ability for system administrators to configure the system in-house, and the extensive community development functionality the county needed to manage development reviews and approvals with one platform.

So far, the county has digitized the building inspection process so inspectors can report on-site with phones and iPads, and launched an online customer portal that allows applicants to submit plans, pay fees, and review their inspection results online. The system also automatically notifies applicants when their application moves to the next phase. “Customers don’t need to call in to figure out what’s going on,” said Michael. Staff get alerts when it’s time to do their part, too, cutting down on back-and-forth travel time and keeping things moving efficiently.

Since joining as System Administrator, Michael has been automating more processes and workflows himself, and will soon bring all of the county’s planning and permitting applications online. He likened the workflow builder to “a box full of toys,” and added that creating workflows from scratch has been relatively straightforward.

Even other staff at Athens-Clarke County have found that the system gives them more agency and makes it easy to figure things out on their own. For example, the team no longer relies on Michael to create reports and can build them themselves. This way, they get faster access to the data they need to make decisions and respond to issues in real time.

While the system gives staff more control, there’s also a strong partnership behind the scenes that they can lean on — both from Clariti and Avocette, who implemented the system. “I’ve worked in IT for a long time and have met lots of vendors, but where I think Clariti and Avocette really excel is in customer service,” said Michael. “It’s a human-first type of work relationship.”