The next generation of enterprise software must meet new expectations as technology reshapes the demands on governments worldwide.
Here’s an exploration from Tactiv COO Damien Zeller, speaking at the 11th Annual Technology in Government Summit in August, of how delivering The Four S’s of Enterprise Software – secure, stable, simple, social – will help governments meet the challenges of digital transformation.
It’s a question government agencies or authorities that manage the delivery of complex economic, social and environmental programmes want to answer – what outcomes are we achieving for our investment?
How to measure contract, grant and program performance against policy objectives, while increasing client responsiveness to better inform policy and program design?
Enter Enquire – a cloud based, a highly configurable, full lifecycle solution that improves the administration, data quality, compliance and reporting capability from public spending programs.
At Tactiv we have come up with the Four “S’s” of Enterprise Software which helps inform our product design decisions.
Secure
Data and infrastructure security come to mind when we think about cloud based systems.
While firewalls and network gates can minimise and mitigate vectors of attack, process security within the application itself is often overlooked. Who can see what data when? Who can execute on a function?
Traditional system defined roles and business process or hard-coded processes are extremely rigid, offering no enterprise agility, flexibility and often compromising the user experience.
How can we provide enterprise agility for future change, but mitigate the risk of fraud? Enquire offers capabilities around a redefined security and data model to provide configurability system wide including roles, permissions, workflows, delegations and approvals.
For example, a government organisation may deal with both large, multi-year projects as well as high volume low value grants, with each offering different risk profiles requiring different payment approval workflows.
Large multi-year projects require a robust business process with more touch points, while high volume, low value grants need a streamlined and simple process with minimal overheads and low transaction cost.
Both solutions are fully auditable, with history change captured, and both are possible within the same Enquire installation via configuration options.
Stable
Delivering applications that are reliable and robust is a must for governments. Monolithic architecture of the past is giving way to new systems that are both more responsive to ever changing demands, while being reliable and robust for enterprise needs.
The key is to deliver solutions based on a micro-service architecture, allowing different parts of the application to respond independently to end user demand.
From Enquire’s perspective this means our reporting services and document services can be under heavy load, yet mitigate any impact on end users transacting with the system and engaging data.
Commercial off the shelf systems, cloud based and configurable, are designed to offer clients easy and fast implementation, with the benefit of proven stability that single use custom developments cannot guarantee.
Simple
Configuration over hard coding. Technical teams need to focus on developing capabilities. Tactiv consultants, our partners and even business based system administrators can configure the system through our admin portal.
Configuration over coding provides enterprise agility and operational efficiencies. When Cyclone Debbie caused widespread destruction in early 2017 the Queensland Government could respond with disaster recovery funding announcement within three days of the event.
Clients can configured themselves new data templates, application and assessment forms, and new business processes. New programs can be operational in days proving given the right tools and systems the government can deliver highly responsiveness services to support the needs of the community in any situation.
Social
One of the key factors that holds back digital transformation is the risk of moving from legacy platforms or introducing new systems that fail to ‘play well with others’.
Enquire’s API centric approach ensures that the platform can easily interact with other systems, including SSO, Word & Office applications, business intelligence tools, reporting systems and financial and information management systems.
Designing to be social, mixing well with other systems, provides further advantages to clients in the growing demand to connect end to end processes. Expensive custom coded, and one-off developments are avoided. Flexibility is retained and clients are not locked into models, code and structures that are quickly outdated.
The future of enterprise software is Secure, Stable, Simple, and Social offering fast track digital modernisation, interfaces with existing legacy systems, a modular approach that de-risk systems migration and importantly provides a great user experience that people will actually use.
Download presentation: The Four S’s of Enterprise Software
