Transforming Government through Technology

St. Joseph County: Process Mapping and IT Efficiency

"They were helping us come up with a different vision of how County government can run…one that will have a huge benefit for residents because it makes us a better steward of their tax dollars."

Municipal government services move at the speed of internal processes that span multiple departments and often, several key stakeholders. Throughout these processes, paper-based systems limit the ability to move quickly and information is sometimes lost through multiple stages of review and activities. As local governments need to continuously to deliver vital supporting services to cities and counties, it can be difficult to improve outdated activities without outside help to drive forward progress.

enFocus engaged with St. Joseph County in 2014 to reduce total information technology spending and increase the level of services to residents. EnFocus assisted in reducing overall costs by analyzing and renegotiating service contracts based upon known best practices. enFocus also assisted the implementation of a new Voiceover Internet Protocol (VoIP) system County-wide. In 2015, the County Auditor engaged enFocus again to build a comprehensive understanding of processes and services across County departments. The findings would yield recommendations for efficiency gains that would drastically reduce costs and increase the effectiveness of deparments all over the County. Throughout the course of this engagement, enFocus completed process maps and value stream exercises across 13 County departments. At the same time, enFocus coordinated vendor implementations for website and human resources management implementations with local providers and Kronos. The savings from these and the process mapping implementations are expected to exceed $1.8 M over five years, with greater anticipated savings associated with a full implementation of the Kronos workforce management system.