How to Find the Best Municipal Government Software

  • By: Brennan Ward
  • July 26, 2022
two people sitting on a park bench while one person holds a tablet and gestures at it

Whether you plan to invest in municipal government software or are looking for a new software vendor, it’s essential to consider various factors and choose the best solution. Every vendor is different, and not every solution can fulfill your specific needs since different software has unique features, pros, and cons. Therefore, when choosing government software, you should assess your organization’s specific needs and all possible solutions.

eScribe offers a top government software solution for improved municipal government operations. eScribe’s municipal meeting management software helps you run your daily activities seamlessly, from reporting to meeting management, among other uses. In addition, it comes with quality-built features that enhance workflows, increasing efficiency before, during, and after meetings.

Benefits of Municipal Government Software

Investing in municipal government software comes with several benefits. Here are some of the advantages of digitalizing your municipal meetings:

  • Simplifies complex meeting workflows
  • Boosts transparency and citizen engagement
  • Saves time and effort, allowing you to achieve more
  • Improves collaboration

With streamlined operations, municipal staff can focus less on administrative tasks and more on critical tasks. This helps municipal government achieve their goals more efficiently. And to minimize the learning curve of any new software implementation, eScribe integrates with many applications you probably already use daily.

What Does Municipal Government Software Do?

The right government software solution can help you achieve a lot within a short time. Burdensome administrative tasks become easy with government software. As a result, you can manage operations effectively and deliver government goals and objectives more efficiently.

Municipal government software enables your team to easily manage multiple tasks that are often highly complex when handled manually. This gives the team more time to focus on other, more mission-critical tasks. Additionally, municipal governments can leverage software solutions and identify areas to reduce costs. This is vital, as local governments must handle taxpayer funds as efficiently as possible.

What Is at Stake if Governments Don’t Invest in Software?

Managing municipal governments is not a walk in the park. It can be challenging to manage your operations smoothly if you do not invest in government software. Handling pre-meeting work, meeting artefacts and documents, votes, requests to speak, live streams, and agendas can be time-consuming, tiring, and complicated. Government software can streamline processes and boost efficiency for all of these tasks.

Steps to Find the Best Municipal Government Software

Below are the vital steps to help you find a suitable municipal government software solution:

1. Align on Government Goals and Objectives

The right software solution should help you achieve the goals and objectives of your local government. Look for software that can help you streamline operations and improve collaboration and transparency. The ability to align goals lets staff know what they are doing and their overall contribution.

2. Identify Government Software Categories

You should check the software categories and features depending on your needs when looking for municipal government software. Here are software categories you should consider to help you find the right government software solution.

  • Enterprise resource planning
  • Meeting management
  • Financial management
  • Government reporting
  • Citizen relationship management

No matter what you need the software for, you should analyze its features and choose one that suits your needs.

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3. Meet With Prospective Vendors

Choosing the right government software begins with selecting the right vendor. It’s best to meet prospective vendors to analyze their solutions and conduct a thorough vendor evaluation process. Shortlist the potential vendors, and scrutinize them until you get the right one. Here are the questions you can ask the vendors.

  • Is the software user-friendly?
  • Is training needed?
  • How is your customer support?
  • What is the set-up procedure, and is it manageable?

Detail the feedback from each vendor, and analyze and determine which vendor is the most suitable and reliable. This way, you can be sure of making informed decisions before buying the software. In addition, it helps you get valuable software from a reliable government software vendor.

4. Ask for a Free Demo

A free software demo is a solid way to know and see all the software features at work and determine whether they can meet your needs. With a free government software demo, you can better assess how much a particular solution will help your staff.

Product demonstrations also give you the added benefit of hearing about each feature straight from the experts. This helps ensure that you will be taking advantage of the full power of the software should you implement it. In addition, you can ask critical questions, pose various scenarios, and explain your goals to a vendor who knows the product inside and out.

How eScribe Powers Municipal Governments

eScribe is an effective government software that helps municipal governments conduct public meetings efficiently and productively, all while opening accessible avenues for transparency and public engagement. Here are the benefits of using eScribe:

  • Built-in features designed with municipal governments top of mind.
  • A smooth meeting management experience for governments.
  • Works with remote, in-person, or hybrid meeting formats.
  • Boosts transparency and public engagement.
  • Module-based, so your solution is configurable to your needs.
  • Easy migration with outstanding customer service.

With eScribe, you don’t need to change your entire toolset to start using the solution. It is highly flexible and scalable, and it integrates with many popular tools most staff are already familiar with. Best of all, it can be configured to your specific needs with module-based packages, allowing you to pay for only what your organization needs.

Simply Municipal Government Operations with eScribe

Aligning on government goals and objectives, identifying government software categories, meeting with prospective vendors, and asking for a free demo are the key steps to help you identify the right municipal government software for your needs. To learn more about implementing digital tools in local government, check out our whitepaper: Digital Transformation: The Death of Paper in the Digital Age.

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