what value does esri bring to a county recorder's office?

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12-03-2015 08:30 AM
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DebraWilliams
New Contributor II

We are creating justifications for our enterprise license for several county offices, including the county recorder.  We'd love to hear success stories from other users in this subject.  Thank you.

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10 Replies
JoeBorgione
MVP Emeritus

Check these two county sites here in Utah: 

Weber County

Salt Lake County Recorder

There are 27 other counties in Utah that probably have something similar, I work in both of these.

That should just about do it....
DebraWilliams
New Contributor II

Great references, Thank you!

Thanks ~ Debra

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AdrianWelsh
MVP Honored Contributor

Hi Debra,

I do not work for a county office but one of the best things you can do is to sell your 'product' by just showing off what GIS can do. Flashy maps always wow decision-makers like county officials. But, also you can show the power of GIS by showing an app you created or a process you made to look up information quickly (or show a way to generate mailers by doing a buffer search around a property, obtaining the addresses, and spitting out mailing labels, etc).

There is an older ArcUser article on on Esri's site that shares the value of GIS to a county office:

Illustrating the Value of GIS

You can also search different county GIS departments to see what they are doing (some have some good descriptions that you can craft your write-up from). I just did a quick search and found this on Rutherford County in North Carolina (GIS Department) but there are countless other places you can look.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,

Adrian

DebraWilliams
New Contributor II

This was helpful, thanks so much!

DarrenWiens2
MVP Honored Contributor

Do you already have an enterprise license? It sounds like it.

How does it bring value to your office? Just being the devil's advocate, but maybe it's not bringing value.

I'll add: the main reason I bring this up is that in other areas on these forums, you're expected to start with "what you've got so far" so others can help.

ChrisDonohue__GISP
MVP Alum

To tag onto the idea Darren Wiens posted, you may want to explore the advantages/disadvantages of having an enterprise license.  Having this information formulated will help buttress your choice - it is not uncommon for decisions on funding to be questioned.  What does your organization use if for, and what are the alternatives?  Does it serve your organizations needs?  Is it sufficient or insufficient for what is currently needed and what is planned in near future?  For example, what if the organization changed to just ArcGIS Desktop licenses - would that impact things?  For better or worse?

Also, licenses vary, so you may want to provide some specifics on what your enterprise license currently includes.  This will help the GeoNet folks you are appealing to in providing good examples that match your situation.

ArcGIS Platform | Pricing

If it is determined that an ESRI enterprise license indeed is very valuable, you may additionally want to talk with ESRI for suggestions on helping to explain the value.  They may have already developed resources that you may be able to tap into.

Chris Donohue, GISP

DebraWilliams
New Contributor II

Thank you for your input. We do have an enterprise license and the justification will be used to identify the value to each department for the continuation of the contract as an overall tool. Information from each department cross references to at least one other department. The issue is payment of the contract from individual budgets versus a singular funding source.

Thanks ~ Debra

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ChrisDonohue__GISP
MVP Alum

This gets a bit trickier, then.  It sounds like the issue is likely that different departments use the enterprise license to different extents, so is not as simple as "we have 10 departments so the total license bill is divided by 10" approach to paying for the license.

Some possible approaches:

- More usage equals more cost.  However, I'm not sure what tools ESRI has to check usage.  There might be some in the ArcGIS SDE Administrator tools and other areas.

- Certain functionality of an enterprise license may only be used by one Department.  They pay more to cover for that.  For example, only one department uses the Network Analyst Extension, so they toss in more to cover that.

Chris Donohue, GISP

DebraWilliams
New Contributor II

Chris:

That makes sense. I think I have enough information to begin, thanks so much for all your help.

~ Debra

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