Part three of a seven blog series on cloud computing for public sector.

Gravity is a Good Thing… Unless It’s Holding You Down from Moving Up

It takes a lot of power to escape the Earth’s atmosphere, and that’s exactly what cloud computing can give your jurisdiction — the power to increase the level of service to your constituents astronomically! So, what’s holding you down?

You’re undoubtedly “version locked” into your existing ERP or other specific software, and you’ve never had the extra funds to budget for expensive upgrades. Here are some of the ways your legacy software applications are not only holding you down, but actually harming the way you provide services to your jurisdiction*:

You’re Spending Your Valuable, Yet Limited, IT Budget on Maintenance Instead of Innovation — If your IT team spends more than half their time on day-to-day operations like managing your infrastructure and only the rest of their time on problem-solving constituent requirements, then you’re doing more harm than good. Move to a cloud-based ERP system and get the IT team focused on internet accessibility, reliability and innovations.

You Fail to Provide Your Constituents with the Internet-Based Services they are Demanding — A true cloud-based ERP system enables your community to go jurisdiction wide instantly. Citizens no longer accept the excuse that “it just takes more time with the government procurement process.” They know better and understand which online services can make their lives a whole lot easier.

Your Constituents Complain They Are Frustrated Because They Can Not Access Your Legacy System 24/7/365 — It’s the way of the world and your citizens want you to keep up with them. Almost everyone has a smartphone or other mobile device and they expect to be able to sit down at their laptop at 1:00 a.m. to complete, for example, an online business license application or schedule inspectors. Give them that ability with the cloud and you’ll spend less time on complaints!

In a recent study evaluating private sector companies using a cloud solution, it was found that those organizations saw an average ROI of 150%

Lack of Transparency Causes Citizens to Question Your Jurisdiction’s Business Decisions and Tax-Funded Expenditures — An out-of-date, brittle ERP system can not provide instant access to information that your constituents deserve and can not keep up with the changes required by new laws and regulations. The lack of modernity expressed by your old software can unjustly reflect on the way your departments conduct business.

Your Workforce in the Field is Inefficient and Frustrated Because They Can’t Work Anywhere, Anytime — Old ERP was never designed for the post-PC era of the anytime, anywhere workforce, but cloud applications are. No matter how much you upgrade your old PC-era ERP system, it will never be easy to access over mobile devices because in some cases, it was engineered before the Internet was invented.

*Source: NetSuite | Oracle White Paper, “8 Ways Legacy ERP Harms Businesses, 2017

Next week’s blog:

Ditch the Dinosaurs… Evolve Your Technology in a Matter of Minutes

No matter your age, it’s pretty difficult for anyone to say they still don’t love dinosaurs. It’s just something you don’t easily outgrow. On the other hand, we are certain that we all feel true disdain for outdated business systems. You can not provide your citizens nor your workforce with the information they need at any time, from anywhere and on any device with a lumbering, T-Rex sized system that ravenously consumes your data, but then refuses to give it back in the form of accurate, instant and intelligent reports.