“Before PlatCore, training was fragmented across multiple systems and spreadsheets. Now, everything lives inside ServiceNow—automated, connected, and effortless to manage.”
~ Marie Jackson, Learning & Development Lead, Townsville City Council
Townsville City Council, the largest urban center north of Australia’s Sunshine Coast, serves as a major government, business, and community hub. With a workforce of more than 1,600 employees spanning veterinarians, engineers, gardeners, accountants, and lawyers, learning and compliance play a vital role in keeping operations safe, efficient, and compliant.
Operating in a highly regulated environment, the Council must ensure every employee completes annually mandated training while managing dozens of specialized certifications and licenses. The challenge? Coordinating learning across such a diverse workforce—without a unified system—was time-consuming, manual, and costly.
Before implementing PlatCore, Townsville City Council managed learning across multiple disconnected systems.
Training records were stored in an HR database that lacked training functionality, online learning was hosted on a standalone platform, and attendance or assessment records were maintained manually in spreadsheets.
“The management of training was a very administrative and labor-intensive process with little to no automation,” said Marie Jackson, Learning & Development Lead at Townsville City Council.
The consequences of fragmentation were significant:
“The mandatory annual Code of Conduct training took us a total of 600 staff-hours to deliver to 1,600 staff,” said Jackson. “It was effective for compliance, but a huge drain on resources—the whole business wanted a change.”
It was clear that Townsville needed a modern, integrated learning solution that could automate administrative work, ensure compliance visibility, and deliver an easy experience for users.
Already a ServiceNow customer, Townsville saw an opportunity to bring learning onto the same platform that powered its HR and IT workflows. PlatCore LMS—built natively on ServiceNow—offered the perfect fit.
Implementation was remarkably simple.
“It really is as simple as installing an app on your phone if your business is ready and already using ServiceNow,” said Jackson.
Because PlatCore runs within ServiceNow, there was no need for new infrastructure, integrations, or technical training. A small internal team led the project, supported by PlatCore’s implementation experts. The Council quickly configured the system, migrated content, and set up automated workflows—all without a large project budget.
Within the first month of go-live, 85% of Townsville’s workforce—over 1,300 employees—completed their first course without requiring system training.
Innovating Role-Based Learning with “Training Roles”
During implementation, the Townsville team worked with PlatCore to enhance the system’s flexibility through a new feature—Training Roles.
The concept was born from Townsville’s desire to simplify how training was assigned. Instead of assigning courses manually to each of the 1,600 staff members, the Council could create reusable role profiles linked to positions such as “Administrator,” “Engineer,” or “First Aid Responder.”
“If you give staff access to a full catalog, they’ll often choose what they want to do rather than what they need to do,” Jackson explained. “By linking training to roles, we ensured every employee received exactly the training required for their job—automatically.”
Training Roles also allowed Townsville to:
This innovation became so impactful that PlatCore incorporated it into the product for all customers.
Results: Streamlined Learning, Automation, and Measurable Impact
After consolidating learning on ServiceNow, Townsville saw rapid and measurable improvements across the organization.
Automation & Efficiency Gains
PlatCore eliminated repetitive administration work, automating enrollment, tracking, and reporting.
“The learning and development team is now freed from manual data entry and can focus on improving training outcomes rather than maintaining spreadsheets,” Jackson said.
Replacing face-to-face delivery with online learning transformed compliance completion rates.
“Our annual Code of Conduct training used to take 600 hours of in-person delivery,” said Jackson. “With PlatCore, 85% of staff completed it online in just 20 days—saving time, resources, and frustration.”
Automated dashboards now give staff and managers live insight into training status. Color-coded indicators flag expiring certifications, helping departments proactively plan renewals before compliance lapses occur.
With single sign-on and personalized dashboards, learners can access everything they need directly within ServiceNow. The user-friendly interface required no end-user training, even for field workers with limited digital experience.
“It’s so intuitive that end users didn’t need to be trained in the system,” Jackson said. “In the first month, 1,360 staff completed a course—that’s 85% of our workforce.”
Validated Business Outcomes
Townsville City Council’s measurable improvements since implementing PlatCore include:
| Metric | Result |
| Manual data entry | Reduced from 1,000+ entries per month to zero |
| Compliance delivery time | Cut from 600 staff-hours to 20 days of self-paced completion |
| Staff time savings | 447 hours saved monthly; 50% directly from PlatCore automation |
By consolidating its learning management function into the ServiceNow platform, Townsville City Council eliminated fragmentation, automated compliance workflows, and delivered a seamless learning experience for every employee.
PlatCore’s native integration not only simplified administration and reporting but also empowered Townsville to scale learning, improve compliance, and reinvest time back into employee development.