Published in · 6 min read · 4 days ago
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Cats and dogs in South Bend now have an even better chance of finding their forever homes, thanks to the new and improved application experience at the South Bend Animal Resource Center (SBARC)!
SBARC teamed up with the Department of Innovation and Technology’s Digital Team to design and implement a form that would decrease application time and get more pets into homes. This project involved cross-departmental collaboration, solutions design skills, and some talented form builders to create a more efficient and user-friendly experience for all involved.
Problem: a lengthy and burdensome adoption application that led to increased stress on SBARC employees and more dropped applications.
Solution: an improved smart form that decreased the application time by 80% and led to increased efficiency and more adoptions.
Tools and processes used: process mapping, interviews, site visits, Jotform, Microsoft Power Automate, SharePoint
SBARC is the nexus of animal welfare in the City of South Bend. Their responsibilities include animal adoption, lost and found support, owner resources, and pet education. They also provide resources to help with investigating animal abuse, dealing with distressed animals, dog licensing, spaying and neutering, and a variety of other functions that keep our animals healthy and happy.
In the summer of 2024, SBARC approached the Department of Innovation and Technology’s Digital Team with a project to fix their adoption application form. The old form was long, asked irrelevant questions, and resulted in a heavy burden on the SBARC staff. SBARC knew that the only way to increase applications and get more shelter pets into homes would be to fix the application process.
With over 70 questions for applicants to answer, the old application took up to 20 minutes to load when it was submitted! The shelter staff would start loading an application, go off and do another task, and then return to it, hoping it’d be fully loaded by then.
The application also required SBARC staff to call and verify information such as landlord information and veterinarian records — which was not time effective at all and resulted in a lot of frustrating back-and-forth between SBARC and the landlords and veterinarians.
The old form was also causing a lot of dropped applications. Prospective adopters would call and try to get more information about their application, but then would find out that it had never been submitted or was missing vital pieces of information for SBARC to get in contact with them. There also was a paper form that individuals could fill out at the station, but with all the information needed in-person, it just contributed to the chaos.
SBARC needed a single form that would get all the information they needed in one place, efficiently, and with minimal intervention from the shelter’s staff before review.
The project lead for SBARC’s new form was Solutions Designer Andrea Sandusky. Andrea’s role is to come up with ways to make the lives of City employees and residents easier and more efficient, resulting in better outcomes for all. This often means developing different types of forms, automation, database transfers and other low-code solutions.
Andrea and other members of the Digital Team had some initial meetings with the SBARC team to familiarize themselves with the application and the shelter. The discovery phase included interviewing the individuals who review applications, doing a deep dive into the application itself, and even visiting the shelter.
“I went through the form and placed myself in the shoes of someone who would want to adopt an animal,” says Andrea, “and then asked myself how much simpler could I make this process?”
Andrea knew that getting animals adopted and out of the shelter quickly was of the upmost importance and realized that one easy way to do that was to set expectations with the applicant right off the bat. For example, the form now links the SBARC PetFinder portal so that applicants have easy access to the information they need on the animal they want.
Applicants can also now save forms in progress so that if they don’t have all the information they need at once, they can return to it in the future when they have everything they need. This saves the SBARC staff from the runaround of having to track down veterinarian records and landlord information, which was a major time waster.
The next step was to take out redundancies. The old form consisted of a lot of repetitive questions, and irrelevant ones to certain applicants. For example, if an individual owns their home instead of rents, in the old form they’d have to wade through questions about a landlord that didn’t even apply to them. Andrea fixed this issue by creating branching questions and using in-form logic to get the right questions to the right applicants.
One of the best features of the new application is that now an email notification gets sent to the relevant staff members whenever an application comes in, with all the necessary information at their fingertips. The form now also has its responses entered into a SharePoint space where SBARC employees can filter applications and track the progress on them much easier than before and have all the documents they need all in one place.
“I’m really pleased with the result because Erica [Rarick, adoption coordinator] was a lot happier with the SharePoint site as well because it loaded immediately, and not after 25 minutes of waiting,” says Andrea.
Speaking of wait time, the new application went from an average completion time of 25 minutes to a little over 5 minutes — that’s an 80% decrease in application time! In the few months since the new application was launched and this blog post was written, dozens of new applications have come in and been processed in record time. In one recent week, they processed 17 applications — 7 of those on Friday alone!
Additionally, the application accuracy rate has also improved significantly. Now, 95% of submissions are completely submitted, and only a handful require follow-up, compared to before when roughly half of applications needed follow-ups and additional information. This means Erica is spending less time on the phone and is now working more efficiently. “I’m able to spend more time adopting out animals instead of chasing down paperwork,” she says.
This efficiency means that if the submission is qualified, an applicant can get their new pet virtually the next day, when before it would take much longer. This means more pets out of the shelter and into loving homes.
“I was super glad to get something out there and see the results of it and just hearing the feedback from Erica and Lindsey both about how much it has helped them,” says Andrea. “I just wanted to make sure it was helpful for them, but also helpful for
applicants as well, and if it helps get these animals adopted quicker, then I’m all for it.”
Two weeks after the launch of the form, the SBARC team was brimming with ideas of how the Digital Team could help improve more processes — so it looks like there is more work ahead on the horizon!
“What I’ve learned from this project is that while there’s always room for, you know, improvement on things, there’s also good enough,” Andrea reflects. “I can kind of get stuck personally just in that perfectionism, and sometimes good enough is the best too. And, there’s nothing wrong with looking back and wanting to improve stuff later.”
For more information on SBARC and pet adoption, head to their website and check out the nifty new form while you’re there. To learn more about the Department of Innovation and Technology, go to their website and find out how you can get involved with innovation in South Bend!
I&T Digital, housed in the Department of Technology, is an internal team that assists the City of South Bend’s departments in getting the most out of their technology. Stay tuned for more exciting projects coming out of this team, from AI-powered translation apps to interactive websites for city festivals!
