A Major California City

A major California city leverages ItemAge image technology to enhance constituent service and streamline the processing of payments for a variety of transactions and services.

Cities collect taxes and fees to provide key services to their constituents. This California city’s Office of the Treasurer & Tax Collector is committed to making these payments as easy as possible. The City Payment Center is the Treasurer’s one-stop service center for businesses, residents and visitors seeking purchase or payment for a variety of transactions and services. In addition to business registration and property tax services, the Center offers other services including water bill payment, dog licenses and subway passes.

Challenge

• Experiencing difficulty with the increasing volume of payments
• Using outdated technology that does not process the variety of transactions needed
• Labor intensive and time consuming payment processing function

Solution

In order to meet increasing payment volumes and keep pace with changing technology, the city sought an integrated imaging, remittance processing and cashiering solution to replace its outdated technology. After publishing an open RFP and extensively evaluating solutions available on the market, the city selected ItemAge, Creditron’s scalable, parameter-driven software designed to automate payment functions such as data capture, document handling, data processing and cashiering for walk-up payments.

The city’s Office of the Treasurer & Tax Collector selected Creditron based on its integration of multiple scanning devices into a single networked system, the labor savings that come with having employees all use the same solution, its integrated image archive, the ability to have one vendor provide an end-to-end payment and cashiering solution and Creditron’s proven commitment to R&D.

Further, Creditron provided references for many state and local governments that implemented similar solutions and it was the lowest bidder to the RFP.

The software features capabilities for power encode and read-and-key operation; multi-stub and multi-check handling; data entry for list bill and check-only processing; two-pass data capture and power encode; image keying; amount recognition; mark sense; in-line account lookup; cash, float and endpoint breakout; and multi-transport and multi-site processing.

Incorporating a workflow manager and multiple modes of operation, ItemAge integrates all of the data and images from the city’s remittance and cashiering processes into a single, seamless operation. In addition, the software provides common graphical user screens for both remittance processing and cashiering, improving the user experience and optimizing the city’s labor resources for position coverage, peak volumes and new employee training.

To accommodate the wide variety of remittances the city receives, hundreds of special purpose screens and associated business rules have been developed since the system was deployed. Further, the city leverages a mix of scanners and itemprocessing transports, including one NCR 7780 high-speed (500 documents per minute) transport for power encoding, one NCR 7780 low-speed (300 documents per minute) transport for read-and-key processing and handling odd payment amounts and multiples, one HP ScanJet flatbed scanner for scanning correspondence and other documents, an OPEX 3690, and 15 NCR 7731 Personal Image Processors with card readers for cashiering. The ItemAge solution also incorporated the city’s existing Bell & Howell scanner for business tax forms processing.

The solution is powered by an NCR 4300 Pentium Server equipped with 90 GB of usable disk storage, RAID technology, 128 MB RAM, and 20/40 GB 8 mm tape backup.

Improving Constituent Service

Timely and accurate processing of government payments is critical, not only to maximize cash flow, but also for constituent service. For example, when an account is in arrears and up for disconnect or suspension of service, government users must know when a check arrives. ItemAge Hot File notifies users as soon as a check is scanned, so they can take action. The security and audit features of ItemAge ensure accurate account postings to eliminate misposted payments and avoid costly error correction and potential legal issues. ItemAge can also handle multiple amounts for multiple services, plus net and gross payment amounts. With the ItemAge courtesy and legal amount recognition feature, governments can process mixed net and gross payments, partial payments and multiple payments without sorting. ItemAge Mark Sense can also interpret change of address or other markings on a remittance.

“State and local governments are under tremendous pressure to contain escalating costs while continually improving operations efficiency and the quality of constituent care. Our solutions help transform government processes and streamline payment processing across the enterprise—from tax payments to sewer and water bills to license fees,” said Creditron Receivables Automation President Wally Vogel. “Our implementation at the Office of the Treasurer & Tax Collector is an excellent demonstration of the power and flexibility of our payment automation solutions for state and local governments.”

Business Benefits

• Provided an integrated platform to support the city's volume growth
• Powerful performance to handle a wide variety of payments
• Delivered a common GUI to streamline training, backup and peak volume
• Highest levels of reliability and availability
• Provided a consistent user experience across capture devices
• Helped the office maintain its superior level of customer service
• Streamlined training, deployment and backup coverage through its common GUI