Examining the CMRTA 2013 Business License Software Survey

Progressive Solutions has been consistently rated as offering the premiere Business License software for many years as we mentioned in our previous blog post.

In February of 2013,  the City of Carson through CMRTA took a survey of cities asking for feedback  on their Business License Software systems.  Carson is expected to issue an RFP for an integrated software solution that will include cashiering, finance, and business license.

Carson's detailed survey questions below were sent out to over 300 California Cities:

1.  Which software do you use for Business licensing: Munis, Progressive Solutions, or other?

2.  Which software do you use for Business licensing: Munis, Progressive Solutions, or other?

3.  Does the software vendor regularly offer improved features and functionality?

4.  How satisfied are you with the support/help desk?

5.  How satisfied were you with their implementation?

6.  How satisfied were you with the cost?

7.  How satisfied were you with their training?

8.  Do they offer a business license specific user conference? Are you satisfied with their conference?

9.  Do they charge for version upgrades?

10. Do they have a history of successful integration with 3rd party software?

11. Do they charge for new reports?

12. Would you recommend implementation of their business registration/license module?
Cities who utilize Progressive Solutions for their business license software (who found the time to respond) overwhelmingly endorsed LicenseTrack.

Here is what some of our customers had to say:

"The support team is fantastic. They solve all questions and problems quickly and they are very easy to get in touch with…I have nothing but praise for their prompt and friendly assistance.”  City of Monterey

"Third party integration has been very successful on PSI’s behalf” City of Pleasanton
PSI received  no negative responses despite receiving the most feedback.  If you are interested you can contact Chris.Retzinger@progressivesolutions.com  to receive the complete survey.

In the future we will exam some past survey results.

LicenseTrack The Highest Rated Business License Software

It is not uncommon for a software vendor to boast that it is the "highest rated" solution or that it is "award winning". For example, the interested populace places the highest value on the Olympics principally because judges that are supposed to be impartial evaluate the greatest athletes from around the world when they compete head to head.

While in house customer satisfaction surveys are a great way to help improve a companies software, software surveys conducted where multiple systems for a particular purpose are compared and evaluated by a wide range of cities and users offer the most useful information for comparing systems.

Members of the CMRTA (California Municipal Tax and Revenue Association) every so often conduct software surveys and ask for other cities to answer a questionnaire of different aspects of both software functionality and support.  For business license software in particular, during the last decade Progressive Solutions has earned both the highest ratings as compared to other well known Business Tax Software systems and often the most customer participation.  They are more willing to go public with their thoughts and responses.  Our customers not only like our software but like to tell others about it as well. All published surveys we could find for business license software confirm that: Progressive Solutions LicenseTrack is currently the highest rated business license software system.

We will be doing a series of posts over the course of the next few week covering this years 2013 Business Tax Survey Results and previous years results as well.

The City of Antioch and Progressive Hosting

In an effort to cut costs and relieve overburdened IT departments of managing

secure software and database systems, many cities are considering remote hosting for their software solutions. It is unfortunate many web applications are still greatly lacking in the necessary features to run be an efficient choice for finance departments to consider remote hosting. LicenseTrack and the QuickServe Suite of products from PSI have now been proven to accommodate remote hosting!

Remote hosting removes the burden to City's information Technology departments to maintain and upgrade hardware including servers, and software including Windows and SQL and other software which would otherwise be hosted by the City.  Other considerations including the City maintaining their own PCI compliance must also be evaluated.

The City of Antioch recently worked with Progressive Solutions Inc to move their databases and software systems offsite to PSI and run them remotely from the city. Without having to sacrifice any existing functionality in their software system including the ability to directly scan 2 page color documents directly into LicenseTrack, they were able to complete this move in June of 2013.

In an effort to further reduce staff burden the City of Antioch also purchased and had PSI implement Web Renewals with great success.  Special thanks to both Stacy Lucchesi (Executive of Information Technology) and Josephine Castro for their contributions in making this project a successful one.

A partial list of immediate City benefits:
• Reduced IT burden
• Reduced City risk
• No receiving or opening mail if a customer pays via the web, versus via mail (saved staff time and saved trees!)
• No waiting on customer at the counter a customer pays via the web versus via walk-in, check or otherwise (saved staff time)
• No underpayments allowed via web, all required information IS REQUIRED (no extra handling time for underpayments, missing info)
• More compliance as there are now more (convenient) ways to pay (less time required to enforce)
• No going to the bank, & money available quickly (saved staff time)
• No manual entry of payments (saved staff time)
• No potential "lost checks" (whether by the PO or City staff) when a customer instead pays via web (more saved staff time)
• No bounced checks (saved staff time)
• All freed staff time can be used for further enforcement = even more revenue for City
• If our Web Payments Module cost is still an issue, we can implement in logical stages to keep within your budget

Some Benefits to Citizens
• Improved Citizen Service/convenience (their time savings)
• Reduced Traffic Congestion
• Reduced Auto Emissions
• Aid the Disabled business  customer Community
• Their desire to "Go Green" enabled by the City

PSI welcomes Los Altos, CA to the PSI fold!

In another procurement where PSI was compared to other vendors, the City of Los Altos selected PSI's LicenseTrack™ as the most viable option. PSI and city staff worked long hours to ensure the data was just as city management desired. When functionality, flexibility and top notch service are important, PSI is the only option!

PSI welcomes Orange, CA to the PSI fold!

After a great deal of due diligence and months of painstaking research of available products, the City of Orange deemed PSI's LicenseTrack™ to be the most efficient and viable option available. The runner up was HDL. When functionality, flexibility and top notch service are important, PSI is your best option!

Oakland live with LicenseTrack & Ca$hierCentral

After months of thorough PSI & City of Oakland staff testing for Oakland's unique requirements and three days intensive training of 50 city staff members, the final converted data was installed at the city. According to Bill Milny: "Staff members are excited and anxious to use their new software". Production use of the software to manage the city's annual $200 million revenue stream will begin Tuesday! We are very pleased with the entire PSI package and will greatly benefit from the document scanner integration as well the integrated Ca$hierCentral slip/validation printers. We fully expect the efficiencies offered in LicenseTrack to dramatically augment our revenue and look forward to using the RevenueTrack functionality.

PSI certified by MadeInTheUSA.org

Unlike many vendors who pop up in the municipal marketplace, dollars paid to us are spent in the US & Puerto Rican economy. Our highest rated solutions result from US staff members who handily compete with those outside the US with less experience and dedication to the municipal marketplace.
No longer do you need to report issues to those with poor English skills.
If your operation prefers support and software that was designed to meet your current needs and grow to accommodate even your unspoken needs, we are your optimal solution!