How a Texas Town Achieves Their Community Development Goals
- Industry: Town
- Location: Prosper, Texas
- Number of Employees: 330
- Population: 38,520
- Tyler Client Since: 2017
- Tyler products/solution used: Enterprise Permitting & Licensing [powered by EnerGov™], Enterprise Environmental Health, Civic Access, Decision Engine
The rapidly growing town of Prosper, Texas, sits an hour north of downtown Dallas. Ask any of the 38,520 residents, and they’ll say that they love Prosper’s small-town heart and expanding community connections. Residents also love the community events, including the P-Town Pickleball Tournament and a bustling downtown atmosphere. Fostering community engagement and preserving a high quality of life takes careful planning, thoughtful development, and forward-thinking goals.
Challenge
The town of Prosper is proud of the goals they’ve set for their organization, referred to as THRIVES, embodying teamwork, heart, respect, integrity, vision, excellence, and service. Local leaders are committed to continuously improving their civic services and processes for increased transparency, faster turnaround times, and the best customer experience they can deliver. However, their legacy permitting and licensing systems made it challenging to manage growth and maintain a high quality of life in ways that met those essential goals. According to Pamela Clark, business systems specialist for the town of Prosper, “Our previous community development software had limited online capabilities, restricted staff’s ability to collaborate, and hindered communication with our customers. These limitations frequently resulted in duplicate work, miscommunication, and delayed processing times.” With such great challenges, town leaders sought a modern, enterprise solution, that would improve partnerships with their key stakeholders.
Solution
Prosper leaders take pride in their development and proactively implemented Tyler’s Enterprise Permitting & Licensing software. The solution connects town development, planning, inspection, and regulatory departments, automating workflows and increasing efficiency. The town also deployed Tyler’s Enterprise Environmental Health software, which is fully integrated with the Permitting & Licensing application. This delivers a seamless experience for health inspectors and provides a centralized database for important community data.
Tyler’s Enterprise Permitting & Licensing solution provides digital workflows for project transparency, concurrent collaboration, and a dashboard for a single source of truth that keeps stakeholders, reviewers, and applicants on the same page. Adding Tyler’s Community Development Executive Insights module gives town officials access to real-time actionable analysis from enterprise-wide data intelligence.
Civic Access’ 24/7, from-anywhere availability extends town services; and its convenient online functionality enhances their community’s experience. Decision Engine’s intuitive application wizard improves online submissions with guiding questions that walk applicants through various ordinances to identify and submit the correct application type.
The permitting application process is cleaner with fewer errors through the use of Civic Access and Decision Engine which is a huge improvement for our staff and the public.
Pamela Clark
Business Systems Specialist for the Town of Prosper, Texas
Results
A streamlined application process for permitting and licensing activities is a big win for Prosper. Clark says, “Decision Engine provides online guidance for our applicants to ensure they select the correct and appropriate permit or plan application without staff involvement. We’ve decreased the amount of incomplete or incorrect submittals by about 75%.” Cleaner processes also shorten plan and application review times for staff, which extends to an improved client experience for residents and contractors.
Applicants embracing their online options with visibility into their projects and application status, decreased incoming office call volume by 25% since going live and is expected to decrease as more residents embrace the system. Achieving full transparency through the Civic Access portal grants customers the power to track their projects. Customers have one centralized platform to see their project status, next steps, and plan review results.
Agency decision-makers can access Executive Insights’ robust data metrics, empowering them to make more informed decisions. Clark explains one of the benefits of Executive Insights, “It allows our executive staff to analyze current development trends to determine our future staffing needs.” Adding digital environmental health workflows has greatly benefited the community as well. “It’s allowed us to provide professionally formatted inspection results immediately after an inspection,” says Clark. “The staff appreciates that information is organized in a single location. Our staff’s familiarity with Enterprise Permitting & Licensing and its similarities to the Enterprise Environmental Health module makes learning easier. They can work seamlessly between the two environments.” Previously, all environmental health data was stored separately, and staff would spend multiple hours searching for businesses that could be under one person’s name.
Conclusion
Prosper’s modernized community development and business management processes deliver 24/7 online capabilities for both staff and the public, creating a level of understanding and communication that was previously lacking. The Environmental Health application is streamlining health inspection and compliance efforts. But the town isn’t finished. “The next five years are going to be very interesting for our organization,” says Clark. “We’ve had multiple departments that have now had an opportunity to experience Enterprise Permitting & Licensing, and they are excited to join in on our adventure.” Prosper plans to expand the solution through their organization and implement other Tyler Solutions, including an ERP solution that can be fully integrated into the new processes.
Software designed for the public sector equips local governments with tools to enhance the community experience and capabilities that meet customer demand for online options while accelerating community development. Charming towns such as Prosper will continue to attract more residents, and innovative public sector-focused online technology’s transparency, speed, and anytime, anywhere capabilities will continue to help their community THRIVE.