Forward Thinking Fuels Franklin County
Organization Profile
- Industry: County Government
- Location: Columbus, Ohio
- Number of Employees: 126
- Population: 1,310,300
- Number of Years as a Tyler Client: 25+
- Tyler Products Used: Appraisal, Enterprise Assessment & Tax, Enterprise ERP, Enterprise Jury Manager, Open Finance
Challenges
Franklin County is the 31st largest county in the United States, and the largest in the state of Ohio, so the demand for current, accurate property data is very high. At peak times, the Franklin County Auditor’s Office property search site exceeds 1,500 active sessions. Annually, users access more than 41 million pages of information.
With volume that high and constant, there can be no margin for error when it comes to software reliability. As its legacy software continued to age, Franklin County recognized it was time to be proactive and investigate replacing it. They needed to upgrade to a solution that could manage and assign values for more than 438,000 properties and manufactured homes, while also streamlining internal processes and enhancing the customer service experience.
The county was already delivering transparency, however, they wanted to take it to a new level. The auditor’s office needed to modernize its taxpayer services at the same time as it was upgrading its computer-assisted mass appraisal (CAMA) system to make it more flexible, modern in its architecture, and more stable.
In 2013, Franklin County turned to Tyler Technologies, a company who had served its needs well over the last 25 years with other software solutions and services, to begin the process of updating its old legacy CAMA software to Enterprise Assessment & Tax CAMA™ property assessment software. The office also used the opportunity to improve its public service offering by adding an integrated Enterprise Assessment & Tax Public Access™ solution to its Enterprise Assessment & Tax CAMA software.
Enterprise Assessment & Tax Public Access replaced the office’s nearly two decades old property search site for a variety of reasons, including its:
- Ease of integration with Enterprise Assessment & Tax CAMA
- Ability to accept additional data from other sources
- Seamless integration with ESRI® ArcGIS® server technology and Pictometry® image libraries
- Ability to customize the interface to meet the needs of their constituents
Solution
The Franklin County Auditor’s Office was sensitive to removing any data elements or functionality contained in its existing site. The county placed tremendous focus on inventorying these functional areas and data categories to ensure that Tyler’s Enterprise Assessment & Tax CAMA and Enterprise Assessment & Tax Public Access could support these demands.
Enterprise Assessment & Tax Public Access replaced and enhanced the old software and created new opportunities to serve customers. Nearly every department within the Franklin County Auditor’s Office contributes data to the property search site. While the appraisal and tax departments are the obvious contributors, other departments such as Current Agricultural Use Valuation (for agriculture values), Board of Revision, Homestead Exemptions, and Rental Registration all provide valuable data, increasing the office’s focus on transparency and supporting Franklin County’s goal to be an open government office.
Users can now leverage the power of GIS mapping and integration with the rest of the property search site that goes well beyond the query and display tool of the county’s older site. The public can now access the office’s 11 Pictometry image warehouses, as well as more than 1.4 million street-level photos taken since 2002.
The flexibility of the Enterprise Assessment & Tax Public Access software, coupled with the close collaboration between Franklin County and Tyler experts, led to the development of a fully-customized solution that met every complex need of the high-volume auditor’s office. The office deployed a custom solution that could run independent of the property search site while accessing the same database structures, which created a comprehensive custom query engine for users of all levels. This resource is possible because it functions from the same data structures put in place for the office’s configuration of Enterprise Assessment & Tax Public Access.
Results
The county’s modern public access site has proven to be reliable, stable, and easy to use. The county has experienced a decline in public records requests due to user-friendly improvements like:
- Direct links to other offices
- Improved reporting capabilities
- Enhanced search capabilities
By combining Enterprise Assessment & Tax CAMA and Enterprise Assessment & Tax Public Access, the auditor’s office staff feel they are providing one of the most comprehensive and best configurations of Tyler’s software. The upgraded, modernized approach has reshaped workflows with dependable and easy-to-use technology, which helps them to:
- Optimize daily operations
- Improve valuations
- Conduct nearly effortless analysis
The use of multiple Tyler products and services, such as Appraisal Services and Enterprise Assessment & Tax, has allowed for a streamlining of resources in the office, as well as enhanced collaboration between the county, the software, and the appraisal services Tyler provides to the auditor’s office. With the software, county staff gains increased efficiency to focus on the taxpayer needs, produces necessary data at a high quality, and accesses property values and information accurately and quickly. Appraisal Services has helped ensure the county is maximizing the use of its software and data provided by Tyler, all while building strong and uniform procedures and practices to ensure a quality outcome for everyone involved.
Always Accessible. Always Accurate. Always Up To Date.
Get the job done faster and easier with a tightly integrated solution for the challenges your appraisal and tax office faces.
Enterprise Assessment & Tax is the industry’s most robust property appraisal and tax administration software. With its Enterprise Assessment & Tax CAMA solution for property appraisal and Enterprise Assessment & Tax for tax billing and collections, the software can help you tackle your toughest challenges. Its complete web-based, GIS-enabled toolset comes with a full complement of integrated solutions like Enterprise Assessment & Tax Public Access for citizen transparency, Enterprise Assessment & Tax SmartFile for electronic data capture, and Enterprise Assessment & Tax Field Mobile™ for field appraisal work.
Enterprise Assessment & Tax software and its integrated solutions are a powerful blend of innovative functionality and reliable performance.
With Enterprise Assessment & Tax, you can:
- Produce the most accurate and valid appraisals using customizable CAMA calculations
- Collect and disburse tax revenue with integrated software that simplifies the entire process
- Streamline your operations and reduce the need for taxpayer visits to your office
- Make on-site data collection faster, easier, and more accurate
- Deliver outstanding customer service by becoming more accurate and efficient with appraisals, dealing with fewer appeals, and building trust
Best of all, our commitment to you continues throughout the life of your software with continual updates and guidance to help you get the most out of your investment in Enterprise Assessment & Tax.