INFOR CIVICS

Infor Civics offers city, county, or state government agencies looking to provide their communities a complete view of relevant and related information. Built on the Rhythm platform, the solution retrieves citizen data from across government agencies, in compliance with government business logic / regulations, and delivers it in a single beautiful modern web experience. 

• Helps municipal agencies be perceived as a business friendly communities

• Reduces silos between government agencies

• Provides fastest possible permit/application approval processes

Category :

Date:

Role:

Tech Stack:

SAAS Cloud Application

2016-2018

Product Manager

HTML5, CSS, Javascript, REACT, Node.js, Python, AWS

THE SOLVABLE PROBLEM

If you've ever done work on your house, started a business, registered for your drivers license online, or filed a 311 report to your local city or county you probably already know;  government agencies are struggling online.  The problem we knew we had to solve was clear:

"Searching for information and doing business with government is complex. Citizens and businesses are easily confused, frustrated, and annoyed by delays and lack of visibility causing a loss of trust."

Today there are more than 31,500 cities, counties, and utility authorities in the US alone.  Of these a recent Delliotte Digital study found 69% of government agencies believed their organization's digital capabilities were behind private sector counter parts.  This is an important benchmark as private sector enterprises are the ones driving citizen consumer expectations when it comes to online experiences.  Missing the mark on those expectations is a key driver to the problem we sought to target.

The opportunity for Infor was great in this space.  As a provider of back office solutions, Infor had a 20% penetration in the market place for systems of records (the key source of data for a citizen portal).  At the same time Infor only had an 8% market penetration in the portal space with its legacy portal product; a nearly 10-year old solution which was difficult to implement, couldn't support HTML5, wasn't web responsive, and offered no content or digital asset management capabilities.  

BUILDING IT

I documented initial requirements from RFP's received from multiple city agencies, market research around other existing portal solutions, and surveys of business owners in the New York City, Minneapolis, and Long Beach, CA area's who had recently submitted an application for permit or license related to their business.

See a sample survey designed in-house deployed via google docs.

The findings from this research was leveraged to wireframe and build a clickable rapid prototype which was used in on-site usability testing with actual citizens at the City of Long Beach and the City of Minneapolis, two pilot customers who agreed to beta-test the end solution.  

A team of 10 UX designers, front-end and back-end developers ran (8) 4-week sprints to build out the solution.  The work was broken up into stages:

• Overall product launch was split into 3 phases:

  • Phase 1 MVP: Launched a minimal viable product replacing the existing Dynamic Portal service, while incorporating distinctive elements like guided information discovery, designed on a modern platform with HTML 5 support, web responsiveness. Goal: attract three early adopters agencies.

  • Phase 2 Marketfit: Extend the MVP with best-in-class faceted search, integrated notification management, CRM for service requests, and custom portlet implementation.  Goal: enable 2 3rd party solution provider partners an attract our first 20 clients.

  • Phase 3 Horizontal Expansion: Plan to expand beyond core business permit, licensing, and service request coverage to enterprise asset management (EAM) vertical (where we believe significant pent up demand for more robust citizen experience solutions exists)

• Phase 1 work was broken down into additional workflows:

  • Standup the authentication service and configure base-line permissions

  • Built out the API layer; connecting to core applications (Community Devenlopment & Regulation ERP and Configure Price Quote (CPQ) services) to pull in buisness logic, workflows, critical fields and to send back constituent profile, form, and payment submissions

  • Built out of micro-vertical front-end components which consumed the API endpoint responses.

The final product helped leap frog Infor back into the market as a leader in citizen experience platforms and reignited interest and revenue for existing back-office products and service team opportunities.  

ACHEIVEMENTS

• Phase 1 launched with (3) Early adopter agencies followed by 18 city/counties subscribing within the first 18 months.

• $6.1 Million in Revenue over 18 months

• 60% increase in the core CDR application’s win rate when bundled with Infor Civics

• 40% increase in pipeline.

FINAL PRODUCT