It has been an excellent experience. The product has been able to adapt to many changes in business processes and operational requirements. It has allowed for readily reengineering our customer services.

Flexibility, performance, reliability, and integration capabilities.

Complexity in managing objects, their relationships, and process variables, especially for large enterprise deployments. Lack of visual documentation of workflows.

POSSE is used daily to process applications for development permits , subdivision, rezoning and many administrative functions that need to tracked and assigned to staff as the application moves through the work flow. POSSE is an excellent tool to pinpoint who is doing what at any point in the processing of the application. The To do list and the process assignment functions ensure that no file or application is lost and forgotten. Management can review work load and re assign balance as necessary. Connections to mapping systems allow information to be transparent to the public at any time for any application.

The preset work flow ensures that any repetitious task that are assigned to many staff over many years ensures that all applications are processed in the same manner and in the correct order. In terms of the document control feature, many products did not have this feature and the use is invaluable.

The biggest concern is the ability to get changes to the system. Our IT governance requires significant justification to update, upgrade and re configure the work flow. Severe restriction in our management make it nearly impossible to effect changes in a timely manner. I would seek a SDK that the staff could use to modify and update processes and work flow.

POSSE (server/client) is very flexible in the way it adapts to business changes and very reliable in the way it performs on a daily basis. From data entry (permitting/inspections) to report generation, the customizable user interface is simple, easy to learn, and use. The ability for in-house support to configure the user interface, business workflow, report design/output is a boon to productivity. POSSE allows non-GIS & GIS users alike to use the built-in map feature to display points, lines, & polygons in context of the data. The document feature facilitates digital storage/retrieval & management of documents in various formats, minimizing and/or eliminating physical filing. Allows easy changes to user access to various business elements without marshaling. The ability to create & see visual relationships (child/parent, warnings, etc.) is an added practical solution to complex concepts. There's a lot more...

Flexibility is a dual-edged sword in this case. It's both good and bad - customization can become overly complex if not properly tracked and structured; overtime it can and will create a very complicated configuration and workflow. Fees are another difficult area to configure, track, adjust, and accurately report on. POSSE does not currently have a built-in robust fee module. The integration of GIS data with POSSE is essential but it requires SDE which can act as a SPOF. Unless there's a way to technically manage the To Do List, it can and has become impractical for many users. The same is true for the customer database in terms of continued proliferation of duplicate and/or unwanted data. Also, the new POSSE web does not support the drag/drop (tow truck) and maybe even the parent/child (jobs) relationship visual.

Our overall experience has been very positive. POSSE has become the centrepiece of our workplace and has resulted in substantial gains in both productivity and quality.

Our organization began using POSSE ten years ago when we transitioned from a paper-based system of regulatory approvals. The first important benefit was the structure and consistency POSSE brought to our processes, making for more robust and demonstrably consistent decision-making. Now, with years of incremental enhancement, the second benefit to highlight is POSSE's ability to serve a wide variety of needs -- we are starting to use it as an information management system with search and display options that support our work in new ways. A third virtue of POSSE is the reliability of the software -- any service interruptions have been very brief and infrequent.

There are some design constraints, at least with the components of POSSE we use, that limit design options. Nevertheless, creative ways to meet our needs are usually offered by the Computronix designers.

Easy to configure with many built in features. Excellent deployment tools. Software is very stable; we get very few support calls from staff.

Powerful configuration tools; can leverage many existing tools and functions. Configuration tool supports multiple developers; stores modifications in change sets. Great tools for promoting change sets throughout the Posse star. Excellent tools for managing a reporting warehouse and accessing using Dashboard tools. Computronix support is excellent; staff are professional and very knowledgeable.

Database structure is complex; fifth normal form. Upgrades are somewhat difficult due to the Posse 'star' configuration.