The Benefits of Moving to a Hosted Solution

How Agencies Can Get More Value by Moving to the Cloud
State and local government agencies are increasingly relying on self-service technology solutions that provide crucial services and drive citizen engagement through automation. Historically, agencies have kept much of this technological infrastructure in-house, but in recent years more and more organizations—government agencies among them—are shifting to hosted or cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions. Global research and advisory firm Gartner estimates that “[b]y 2025, 95% of new IT investment by government agencies will be made as a Service solution.” Further, according to the 2021 CIO Survey, “56% of government organizations expect to increase the amount of spend on cloud services and solutions in the coming fiscal year.”

Agencies are adopting cloud-based IT solutions to help them keep up with growing customer demands, evolving digital compliance standards and increasing cybersecurity threats. Selectron has helped agencies of all sizes cut costs, reduce their IT and compliance footprints, and maximize data security by moving to the cloud. Following are just a few key benefits agencies have realized from hosted or cloud-based solutions.

Support
Keeping solutions on premise presents agencies with a choice: pay IT staff be on-call to monitor the solution at all times, or risk prolonged outages or malfunctions due to lack of monitoring. Staff who do support the solution must detect and investigate bugs or outages on their own, and often rely on external vendors who may be unable or slow to assist. This is costly in terms of both staff time as well as negative customer experience due to a non-functioning system. As a premiere hosted solution vendor, Selectron monitors solutions 24/7 and can immediately respond to and investigate any system issues as they are detected. We can begin working to resolve an issue before the agency even becomes aware that there is one. We also have established relationships with many software providers, supporting vendors, and subcontractors, which helps us get better support and resolve issues faster. This heightened level of support, for both routine system maintenance and issue resolution, helps to boost overall system performance while reducing cost in terms of both dollars and staff time.

Security
Government agencies face a real challenge in securing their data and the data of their citizens. This becomes all the more important when dealing with sensitive personal information or processing payments from customers. Agencies can lessen these burdens by moving their solutions to a hosted environment where the vendor takes on the responsibility of providing a secure and protected environment. Selectron employs a combination of advanced physical and software security, as well as third-party testing to ensure systems are airtight. Our hosted IT environment is purpose-built to maximize security and prioritize compliance with data-security regulations and Payment Card Industry compliance standards, ensuring our customers have a solution they can trust.

Cost
Some agencies decide against moving to the cloud due to the perceived initial price tag, preferring the control and direct management available with premise-based solutions. This tradeoff makes sense for certain agencies, and Selectron has extensive experience deploying solutions on-premise for customers who need them. But the choice between premise and hosted is not the same for all solutions. Specifically, the solutions Selectron provides are customer facing, and most often involve a high expectation of uptime and 24/7 monitoring. Agencies often need compliance, network, and telephony support, and multiple database integrations to deliver a robust self-service platform. This can mean even the simplest tasks involve multiple levels of coordination. Hosting helps customers manage these factors more efficiently, reducing the time it takes to deploy updates, patches, and fixes, and leveraging scale and solution-specific knowledge. This lets agencies take advantage of significantly reduced internal resource costs, without giving up the system access and control they need.

Over the last decade, Selectron deployed more than 500 secure hosted solutions for government agencies of all sizes, managing system hardware, and handling ongoing upgrades and platform maintenance for our customers. Off-loading these tasks to a vendor that specializes in them frees up funding and allows IT staff to focus on support and other projects.

Focusing on Your Core Mission
Ultimately, moving to hosted or cloud-based solutions allows agencies to outsource IT management to vendors that specialize in it, and allows the agency to focus on its core mission: serving citizens. While the upfront cost can seem steep, it often pales in comparison to the savings agencies can reap by implementing hosted solutions from the right provider. The security and support infrastructure that come with hosted solutions are why so many organizations—corporations, non-profits and government agencies—have opted to move to the cloud.

To learn about how Selectron cuts costs for agencies through hosted solutions, contact one of our Account Executives or call us at 866.878.0048.