What is ERP Being Used for in the Public Sector?
State and local governments are all running at different levels of digital maturity. In fact, Gartner developed a digital government maturity scale to identify the extent to which an organization uses data effectively to “redesign services and deliver new ones, as well as to transform and manage operations.” At the initial stage, most organizations are focused on simply moving their services online to meet user expectations and save costs. As these agencies progress down the digital path, they can tackle open government programs like the Open Data Initiative or commit to a totally data-centric approach to improving data flow.
Where you fall on this scale depends on several different factors that many private companies don’t have to stress about when it comes to implementing ERP. On top of highly specialized functions and controls, state and local governments face many challenges like IT budget pressure, dreaded regulatory red tape, user adoption, security restrictions, and service-led demands.
To battle some of those barriers, here is what many public sector agencies are using ERP solutions for:
Cost Savings in the Cloud
According to Gartner, half of the public sector currently uses cloud services. That number is expected to see double-digit growth by 2021 because cloud-based solutions have lowered the total cost ownership, significantly reduced implementation times, and enabled better integration with other systems. If you are interested in learning more, we recommend you consider Microsoft Azure for Government, a cloud service specifically tailored to the security and compliance needs of the government sector.
