And how to ensure yours isn’t one of them!
87% of Government Software Projects Fail. 87%. Let that sink in. If you employed in a City or Town and you or your IT department is trying to kick off a new IT initiative, your chances of failing at successfully implementing that initiative are 87%. Not 50-50, which already seems like terrible odds, but 87%. 87%!!! You might as well not even try! The odds of failing are so big, I don’t even know what to compare them to. But let’s say you were making a large investment in stocks and your broker told you your chances of making a profit are a mere 13%, would you take the chance? Or if you’re buying a boat and the sales person told you there was only a 13% chance of it NOT sinking, would you invite your family out for a day on the lake?
On top of that, most software projects for cities and counties are hugely expensive to start with, and more often than not end up multiple times over budget, regardless of whether they succeed in the end or fall into the 87% that do not. So even if you don’t fail, you’re likely spending a lot more money than was planned for.
So what are your options?
Yet, this seems to be the reality cities and counties are faced with when looking at new software projects. The reasons so many of them fail are numerous – from having to integrate with or update from ancient and massive systems to the complexity of having multiple stakeholders in the same system – but the bottom line is this: When faced with massive odds of failure, why would you choose the biggest vendor with the biggest price tag and, thus, the biggest monetary risk? Maybe it would be smarter to go with smaller companies that provide nimbler, easier to install, less expensive software that may fit the bill just as well or even better than the behemoth enterprise solutions that are so notoriously difficult to get off the ground?
I believe we’re slowly starting to see a shift in thinking that favors smaller vendors, more agile and off-the-shelf software with faster implementation times and easier user adoption rates. CityTech Solutions fits that description and is designed to automate time consuming processes and improve efficiencies without breaking the bank. The software is built on the premise that simple is often best – when processes and workflows are straight forward, they’re easier to implement, less likely to break, and definitely a lot less expensive. Most small to midsize cities are realizing that they don’t need, nor want, the bells and whistles some of the larger vendors provide; instead, they’re opting for an out of the box solution that still automates the process but doesn’t suck them down the drain of endless options, customizations, unmet deadlines, and malfunctioning integrations they may face with a more complex system.