Client Profile: Hartford, CT
Organization Profile
- Industry: Municipal
- Location: Hartford, Connecticut
- Number of Employees: 4,440
- Population: 121,050
- Tyler Client Since: 2005
- Tyler Products Used: Munis, Tyler Content Manager, ExecuTime, Socrata, EnerGov, Appraisal & Tax
Challenges
Mary Pippin, manager of Hartford’s ERP solution, has been with Hartford since 2007. When Pippin started with the city, she desperately saw the need for a more efficient, transparent, and secure content management system. Hard copies of important documents were located at City Hall, which made the retrieval and audit process complicated. Departments requiring increased security for private documents operated with department-specific drives, and special filing systems were created so city employees knew where to find specific documents. Private document drives could only be accessed by a few select people, which made it difficult for other departments to easily access information when they needed to make decisions, and some data was still stored in their legacy ERP system.
“When accessing information like pension for retirees, aside from trying to access our legacy system, you had to understand how to use a particular drive share,” said Pippin. “Anytime you’d try to find something, you had to know the filing system to locate the documents, and we had to make sure the appropriate employees had access. It was all way too complicated.”
Solution
Hartford selected Tyler’s out-of-the-box content management solution for large organizations, Tyler Content Manager™ enterprise edition, which captures documentation across the organization and effectively creates a fully digital document collection. Hartford management confidently selected Tyler Content Manager (TCM) because it needed functionality to create specific mapping to assign a secure group to access private documents like wage garnishments, HIPAA forms, and direct deposit forms within Munis — limiting the number of individuals who have access to that information.
Hartford upgraded to Tyler’s cloud-based solutions in 2014, where Tyler deploys, configures, maintains, and updates software applications and related data for the city. With Tyler’s cloud-based solution, security risks are minimized by controlling user access and securing data.
Results
For Hartford, the ROI of upgrading to the enterprise edition goes beyond monetary savings — TCM has saved its employees valuable time searching for documents.
We can retrieve documents much more easily. Users can go in and easily index and complete document searches; whereas before, it was like ‘OK, what cabinet are they in?’
Mary Pippin
ERP Manager, City of Hartford, CT
Fast forward to spring 2020, due to procedures implemented during the pandemic, Hartford’s employees started working 100% remote, and Tyler’s secure, cloud-based solutions have become even more valuable to the city.
“The offering is just incredible; I mean, it’s solid,” said Pippin, “We’ve had no problems with employees connecting to our database remotely while working from home. It’s been a tremendous benefit to have this solution, and, honestly, I don’t know what I would have done without it.”
Pippin has also seen tremendous value in using other integrated Tyler solutions during stay-at-home orders. ExecuTime™ helps manage time and attendance, advanced scheduling, and allows management to closely manage overtime remotely while also offering Hartford employees self-service functionalities, like scheduling sick or vacation time. Hartford also uses Socrata to organize and publish financial data into a publicly consumable and interactive dashboard.
To get the most out of their Munis investment, Hartford participates in Tyler’s Planned Annual Continuing Education (PACE) program for Munis, which offers ongoing education to train staff on new features and functions as they become available. “With employee turnover in the city, it’s very valuable for me to be able to use a PACE day and have someone from Tyler go over all the functions of the software,” stated Pippin.
Hartford’s relationship with Tyler is one that spans over a decade and is one Pippin hopes will continue for years to come.
“Our departments are always looking to integrate Tyler products into our system when we can. Employees have been so very positive about their experience and interacting with Tyler’s customer care. It’s a highly valued partnership.”