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The Challenge: Replacing an Old Technology
Washoe County is a growing area located along the eastern slopes of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in western Nevada. The county covers an area of 6,600 square miles in the northwest section of the State, bordering California and Oregon, and has a population of approximately 410,000. The county seat is the City of Reno, the third largest city in Nevada.
The County Treasurer's office desired to replace its tax billing and collection software, which had been deployed many years ago and for which support by the software vendor had expired. "We also knew that we needed to automate more processes," said Tammi Davis, the Washoe County Treasurer. "We had to do a lot of manual work in Excel outside of the system because some of the processes were restrictive." .jpg "Reno1")
Then Treasurer, Bill Berrum and his team, including Davis, first considered turning to the SAP enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution being deployed for all of the County offices. But the solution did not sufficiently meet the specific tax billing and collection needs of the Treasurer's office, so the search continued for a separate solution.
"We needed functionality related to how we bill and collect taxes that would automate all of our processes," Davis said. "But we also wanted to deploy a solution that could be integrated with the county ERP solution so that we could easily exchange information with other departments."
The Solution: Manatron GRM Tax
The County team narrowed the RFP submission down to three solution providers, including Manatron, which recommended that the Treasurer's office deploy GRM Tax, a flexible, comprehensive property tax-billing and collection solution that helps treasurers automatically maintain, bill, collect, distribute and track properties as well as associated taxes. GRM Tax also assists with the management of real property, personal property, mobile homes, minerals, motor vehicle and special assessments.
"We chose GRM Tax because Manatron is a forward-thinking company and their software does not become obsolete quickly," Davis said. "We also wanted a solution provider that was established and proven, as is the case with Manatron. They were also able to demonstrate how they could integrate GRM Tax with the county ERP solution."
Along with GRM Tax, Washoe County also purchased two add-on modules: The GRM Assessment Administration module calculates taxable values from market values and will allow the county to apply legislative changes to actual market values. The second module, GRM Records, is a property and party repository solution that helps manage citizen relationships as well as property assessment and tax management. The module can help the county track existing properties with descriptions of each property and descriptions of the relationship each citizen has with each property. "We knew we would not need to deploy all of the features of Assessment Administration and Records right away, but we also knew it would be advantageous to have both modules installed so that we could grow into them over time as our needs expand," Davis said.
The Deployment: Challenges Overcome
Just as Manatron was about to deploy the GRM Tax solution in early 2006, the Treasurer’s office was dealing with new legislation, issued by the State of Nevada that drastically changed how property taxes were to be calculated. "This was a major hurdle to overcome," Davis said. "It required us to work even more closely with Manatron to react to the changes. The new legislation required Manatron to make changes to GRM Tax so that we could meet the new legislative requirements, and the process took an extended amount of time due to all of the changes. But Manatron diligently addressed all the issues and kept us up-to-date on their progress."
The delay in deploying the solution gave Washoe County the ability to conduct extensive system testing to become comfortable with the solution. Manatron also provided on-site training for the staff so that once the solution went live, the Washoe County staff was able to immediately use GRM Tax to its fullest extent.
"When converting the data from our old system to new system, we knew it would be a challenge because of the age of the legacy system and the way the data was set-up in the previous system," Davis said. "It took several tries because of the revisions GRM went through due to the new Nevada legislation, but we worked with the Manatron team to parse the old data into several smaller segments as required by the new legislation."
As part of the GRM Tax solution, Washoe County also implemented the Manatron online eGovernment solution, which provides e-commerce features that allow citizens to access their tax-payment information and submit payments online. The service also allows title companies to view the public information they need when conducting title searches.
Manatron also worked with the Washoe County ERP solution staff to create interfaces between GRM Tax and the ERP application, which was built using an SAP solution platform. The interfaces give Davis and her staff an automated electronic solution for posting to the County general ledger and for creating checks. This eliminates the need to re-enter payments and charges manually.
The Benefits: GRM Tax Automates Tasks and Streamlines Tax-Bill Corrections
GRM Tax has given Washoe County greater ability to automate more processes to a full extent because all constituent tax data is stored in one database. "Our work-flow processes are now much simpler," Davis said. "We used to have to keep checking back-and-forth among multiple screens to collect information for citizens and perform manual calculations. But everything we need is now within one screen view, and the calculations are automatic. This helps us serve county citizens faster."
The GRM Tax automated work-flow processes allow corrections to be applied to tax bills more efficiently. This ability was particularly important to Washoe County after the new legislation by the state caused the number of tax bill corrections to increase sharply as tax bills became more complex and many citizens qualified for tax caps.
"We needed to make corrections to many tax bills when the new legislation came out," Davis said. "But the way that GRM Tax automates the correction process helped us apply all the changes much faster than we could have done with our previous system, which the new legislation simply would have overburdened."
Washoe County is also able to collect partial tax payments, which benefits tax payers that prefer to spread-out their payments. The overall collection process is faster too so that when citizens make payments in the office, their wait times in line are shorter. "We also reduced the need for citizens to visit our office with the eGovernment online payment service," Davis said. "Giving citizens the ability to make online payments was a formal commitment we made to our citizens, so this was a key benefit that Manatron helped us deliver."
GRM Tax also allowed the county to maintain customer service levels even though it had to cut staff due to budget cuts. "Our tax bills have continued go out on time, and we have continued to do our jobs effectively," Davis said. "With the staff cuts we went through as well as the growth of the county, we would not be nearly as effective without the help of Manatron and GRM Tax. Manatron has been a great partner throughout the process."