Streamlining Tax Operations With SaaS

Organization Profile

• Tyler Client Since: 2013
• Number of Employees: 150
• Population: 1,361,536
• Location: Columbus, Ohio
• Tyler Products/Solutions: Enterprise Assessment & Tax, Enterprise Records Management, Tyler Jury, Content Manager, Enterprise ERP
• Tyler Excellence Award Category: Operational Efficiency

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Challenge

Serving a sizable and rapidly growing population centered around the active hub of Columbus, Ohio, presented considerable challenges for the Franklin County Auditor’s Office. Supporting hundreds of thousands of parcels in an area with complex assessment and tax operations, while utilizing an outdated legacy system, proved to be quite the undertaking for office staff.

Auditor’s office staff relied heavily on paper-based workflows that required physically transferring documents between departments, creating unnecessary delays and an increased likelihood of lost information. Duplicative data entry slowed workflows, created inconsistencies, and underscored the growing difficulty of maintaining the existing technology.

“One of the main challenges was the legacy system required a lot of double keying,” said Chief of Staff Jo Ellen Cline. “It became apparent that the system was built on technology that was no longer viable and was vulnerable to security attacks.”

To better meet the needs of its growing community, the office determined it was time to modernize and find a scalable, secure, and efficient solution.

Solution

To address these challenges, Franklin County sought a solution that offered:

• A consolidated, centralized source of truth for data and forms
• A scalable platform designed to grow and change with ease
• Capabilities to move to a paperless workflow

The Auditor’s Office ultimately chose to implement Tyler Technologies’ Enterprise Assessment & Tax solution in a cloud-hosted software-as-a-service (SaaS) environment to replace the antiquated legacy system. Doing so consolidated data from multiple sources into a single platform and redesigned workflows to eliminate inefficiencies.

Strong collaboration between the Auditor’s Office and the Tyler team was key to the project’s success. The groups worked together to configure the new system to meet Ohio’s complex tax requirements and ensure a seamless data exchange between departments.

Results

These modernization efforts quickly delivered measurable improvements for both staff and residents. By eliminating paper-based workflows, the Auditor’s Office transitioned from paper property record cards to a fully digital system across approximately 500,000 parcels. As a result, residents enjoyed a renewed sense of relief knowing their data was more consistent and reliable.

The new SaaS environment also strengthened security, efficiency, and accuracy across the board. Board of Revision workflows improved significantly by streamlining case handling and reducing administrative bottlenecks.

Training also played a huge role in successful adoption. More than 80% of the Auditor’s Office was trained on the new system, enabling a smooth transition for staff and better service and support for residents.

Beyond operational gains, the project enabled organizational improvements as departments became more integrated, workflows more transparent, and staff better equipped to handle increasing workloads. “Because of the stability of Enterprise Assessment & Tax, we feel confident that this is a system that’s going to be able to take this office into the future,” Cline said. “I think that the support from Tyler is critical in upgrading the system over time and changing along with the changing laws.”

The Franklin County Auditor’s Office is now poised to create a more efficient, resilient, and future-ready foundation for their fast-growing and diverse community.