Accela Announces New Customers and Collaborations to Transform the Delivery of Digital Government Services

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May 16, 2019, 18:46 ET

SAN RAMON, Calif., May 16, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Accela, the leading provider of cloud-based solutions for government, today announced a growing community of new customers, industry partners and technology initiatives focused on developing tools, strategies and new implementations to help government meet today's challenges and better serve communities. Manatee County, Florida; Menlo Park, California; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Mohave, Arizona; Shelby, Tennessee; Suffolk County, New York; and Pinellas, County are some of the latest customers supported by Accela's market-leading solutions.

"Accela works with a growing community of customers and partners to create and implement ready-made solutions on the most robust, extensible platform on the market for government's most challenging issues," said Gary Kovacs, Accela's CEO. "Our powerful community will keep trailblazing the way forward with best-in-class technology solutions and collaborations to continue to drive the next shift in government innovation."

Kovacs joined Accela in December 2018 with IT leadership experience as the former CEO of Mozilla and AVG Technologies. Since coming on board, he has focused on enhancing and reimagining the customer experience, and growing the company's partner community to deliver innovative products and services to all customer segments. In March, for the National League of Cities Congressional Cities Conference, Kovacs penned an open letter to local and state elected leaders on how they can best meet the challenges and opportunities ahead by driving transformation in government innovation.

Manatee County, Florida is one of Accela's customers leading the digital transformation charge and recently transformed their 20-year-old systems with the help of Accela's cloud solutions for planning and building. By deploying Accela, Manatee was able to eliminate paper-based manual processes and move to the cloud to save $250,000 annually and dramatically accelerate operations.

"Our customers no longer have to come to us. They can sit at their desktops and submit all their plans, all their applications," says Manatee's Director of Building and Development Services John Barnott. "We are now paperless and it is a huge savings, both for them and us."

Pinellas County, Florida, a recent Accela customer, experienced the time- and cost-saving impact of implementing a cloud-based solution to digitally optimize the plan review process and improve builder experience to incentivize economic development. Using Accela's Civic Application for Building, Pinellas County was able to tame the previously unwieldy manual review process, increase production, and lower cost.

"Plan review is probably the longest portion of the approval process. The Accela Planning Application will probably compress two weeks immediately - two weeks to a developer can easily be $250,000," says David Howdeshell, Project Sponsor of Pinellas County's Building and Development Review Services. "The direction where I see Accela going is exactly where Accela needs to go. The principles in Accela are smart and visionary enough to bring the rest of the existing clientele to the understanding of where we all need to be."

Results of a newly released Center for Digital Government/Accela survey of state and local government IT and program leaders show that digital service delivery is a major priority for nearly half of respondents surveyed nationwide. With increasing pressure to keep up with technological change and heightened citizen demand, the study finds that leveraging technology such as software-as-service (SaaS) applications can position agencies to thrive by reducing cost and deployment time.

In the City of Menlo Park, California, IT Manager Gene Garces said Accela has played a key role in accelerating its permitting and licensing.

"Keeping up with changing technologies, emerging regulatory guidelines and increasing citizen expectations around service delivery in a cost-effective way is a challenge," Garces said. "Joining the Accela community has allowed us to leverage our existing resources more effectively based on the latest technology and best practices and increase our permitting and licensing processing time exponentially to keep pace with demand."

Other major customer, product and partnership milestones include the following:

In January, Accela introduced its Civic Application for Environmental Health, the latest addition to its suite of off-the-shelf solutions that can be quickly implemented for faster return on investment. The Environmental Health Application follows the launch of the Accela Civic Application for Cannabis Regulation, Accela Civic Application for Short-Term Rental Registration and the Accela Civic Application for Building, ready-made solutions that address challenges reported by government leaders, including deployment time, maintainability and cost.
In February, Accela organized its first Customer Advisory Board made up of 19 city, county and state technology leaders to provide a platform for customers to collaborate, provide direct feedback, and for Accela to collect input on its strategic initiatives and focus areas. Key topics for the group include data analytics, citizen experience enhancements and improvements to customer satisfaction through investments in support and services. The group meets every quarter.
In March, Accela partnered with the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) on the Accela NEHA AEC Scholarship, which awards tickets to those who might otherwise not be able to attend NEHA's Annual Education Conference. In keeping with tradition of the past several years, this year the program awarded nine conference tickets to environmental health professionals eager to attend the conference which provides a venue for them to learn about new developments in the space and share ideas about how to tackle some of today's most pressing challenges.
Earlier in April, Accela kicked off a sustained effort to bring its valued partners even further into the fold in with the Accela Partner Summit, which focused on collaboration and getting solutions to market to enable success for customers and the citizens they serve. Accela is expanding its robust partner community by ramping up work with current partners by providing them with new tools and training, as well as cultivating relationships with new organizations to provide a complete partnership community to solve our customers' most complex needs.
One of Accela's most recent industry collaborations is with the Startup in Residence program (STiR), an organization that connects governments with startups, to help lead the next wave of innovation in government and increase the role the public sector plays in solving community challenges. Accela will provide expert advice to startups working with 28 partner cities, with specific mentorship to Neighborly Software and Qwally.
On April 18, 2019, Accela hosted a webinar with Manatee's Building and Development Services Department to explain how Manatee digitally transformed and sped up citizen services with Accela's cloud solutions. You can watch the webinar online and learn more about Manatee's work with Accela here.

To learn more about Accela Civic Solutions, please visit https://www.accela.com/solutions/.

About Accela

Accela provides market-leading solutions that empower state and local governments to build thriving communities, grow businesses and protect citizens. Powered by Microsoft Azure, Accela's fast-to-implement Civic Applications, and robust and extensible solutions platform, help agencies address specific needs today, while ensuring they are prepared for any emerging or complex challenges in the future. Accela is headquartered in San Ramon, California, with additional offices around the world. For more information, visit www.accela.com.

Contact: Jason Shueh, (925) 659-3200, [email protected]

SOURCE Accela