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SpatialNews.com Press Release
City and County of Broomfield Improve Business Processes with Hummingbird Enterprise(TM) For ESRI
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Hummingbird Enterprise for ESRI is an integrated solution with ESRI's ArcIMS(TM) software, the city's geographical information system (GIS). The Hummingbird solution links records and documents to the city's GIS, allowing municipal workers to quickly and easily access and manage geographic data records from a web-based mapping interface. Staff across all departments will have access to the data necessary for immediate and informed decisions, increasing productivity. The City of Broomfield implemented the Hummingbird Enterprise document management (DM) system two years ago to enable faster, more efficient and secure access to a wide variety of documents and information relating to city council services. Every document that city council must review and approve, such as development applications and plans, building permits and construction drawings, is stored in the Hummingbird DM repository. Documents associated with ongoing projects such as the widening of a road or the development of a new soccer field complex, including project schedules, council memos, resolutions and city ordinances, is also stored in the DM repository. The city's spatial, location-based information such as street and traffic systems, water lines and storm sewer systems for parcels of land and subdivisions is stored in a centralized GIS map library built with ESRI's ArcSDE system and served to customers through ESRI's ArcIMS(TM) software. The ESRI and Hummingbird DM systems work seamlessly together and city staff benefit from the two-way integration linking images and documents to specific geographic data in the ESRI system. The integrated technologies simplify how city staff manage, collaborate, publish and share information. "Almost 80 percent of what we do has a location component to it. For instance, when planning a new subdivision, we need to consider exactly how we're going to develop the land. For example, road layouts, sewer and gutter plans, the type of houses we're going to put in and even what we're going to name the streets. Every element of the plan goes through a council review process," said Greg Anderson, IT director with the City and County of Broomfield. "There are hundreds of documents associated with this type of project and many different departments are affected including parks and recreation, human services and community development. With Hummingbird Enterprise for ESRI, city managers can simply circle an area on a map that they are interested in and then click off the associated documents they need. They are instantly able to find what they are looking for." With Hummingbird Enterprise for ESRI, city staff can locate documents in the DM system concerning a business improvement district, for example, or project schedules and engineering drawings for a new regional mall, and then display the corresponding plat maps by clicking on a web-based geographic feature. Documents can be referenced to projects through text-based searches as well as GIS searches. "The biggest benefit of the integrated systems is the amount of time we save in finding documents that may be permanently lost in some cases or just very hard to find. Previously, we had to rely on the institutional memory of the people involved to find the related documents," continues Anderson. "Now, we are able to quickly find all the information associated with a neighbourhood development. I can have the information I need up on my screen faster than I can tell someone what I'm looking for. It's a great time saver." When the City of Broomfield chose Hummingbird Enterprise two years ago, they looked at several different document management systems. "We chose Hummingbird DM due to its flexibility in managing multiple file types. We're a combined city and county - it's really like running twenty different businesses - and they each deploy software applications that are completely unique to them, so the number of different file types we have here is incredible," said Anderson. "With Hummingbird, we found we could configure a custom application to view a particular file type if necessary and we can use the same product across all our different departments. That was one of the biggest reasons we chose Hummingbird - the flexibility to be able to use the same product to meet the varying needs of many different departments," added Anderson. Version control is also a critical feature for the city, and another key reason they chose the Hummingbird document management system. Version control, check-in/check-out, security, and an audit trail assures the staff that they are always working on the most current versions of the files, saving time in project development, eliminating duplicate efforts and improving accuracy of information. Colorado-based system integration company, Farragut Systems, Inc., worked with the City of Broomfield to integrate the Hummingbird document management technologies with ESRI's ArcIMS. Farragut developed the integration software, the core component of the Hummingbird Enterprise for ESRI solution, which ties the city's document management software with their GIS. "With Hummingbird Enterprise for ESRI, the City and County of Broomfield has further extended the value of its DM and GIS systems, bridging the gap between content management and GIS to provide a simple interface to all map related information," said Andrew Pery, chief marketing officer and senior vice president, Hummingbird Ltd. "The Hummingbird integrated solution helps simplify city council business processes, improving the quality of service they deliver to the city organization as well as to their constituencies, resulting in clear bottom-line benefits." Greg Anderson, IT director with the City and County of Broomfield, will be participating on a Hummingbird Enterprise for ESRI panel at Summit 2005, Hummingbird's 5th Annual Worldwide Conference, in Miami, Florida. Panel members will discuss how they are extending the value of their GIS investments with the Hummingbird Enterprise document management system. For more information about Summit 2005, please visit the Hummingbird Website at: http://events.hummingbird.com/summit/2005/index.html. About The City and County of Broomfield Broomfield, Colorado is a town of 43,000 residents, located midway between Denver and Boulder. It's an award-winning place where living is the Colorado lifestyle at its best. In Broomfield, a true sense of community flourishes and local government prides itself on quality customer service, collaboration and responsiveness - embodied in its mission statement that begins with "Working in partnership with the community..." As testament to its success, residents routinely rank Broomfield in the "excellent" category on annual surveys. In its quest to constantly improve and innovate, Broomfield became Colorado's newest county in 2001, creating a combined city and county government unlike any other, literally reinventing government! About Hummingbird Enterprise(TM) for ESRI Hummingbird Enterprise for ESRI, an integrated solution with ESRI's ArcIMS(TM) software, offers a web-based mapping interface for document and records management and queries by linking ESRI's ArcIMS software and Hummingbird DM, an integral component of Hummingbird Enterprise(TM). The Hummingbird solution is applicable across a broad range of industries including government, utilities, education, oil and gas, military and telecommunications. All geographic-based, business-critical information can immediately be linked through one web interface, not only to data, but also to a wide range of documents, such as photographs, engineering drawings, field notes and digitized audio and video. To learn more please visit: http://www.hummingbird.com/solutions/business/gis.html. About ESRI For more than 30 years, ESRI has been the leading developer of GIS software with more than 300,000 clients worldwide. ESRI software is used in all 200 of the largest cities in the United States and in more than 60 percent of counties and municipalities nationwide. Headquartered in California, ESRI has regional offices throughout the United States, international distributors in more than 90 countries, and more than 1,400 business partners. ESRI's goal is to develop comprehensive tools that enable users to efficiently manage, use, and serve geographic information to make a difference in the world around them. ESRI also provides consulting, implementation, and technical support services. ESRI can be found on the Web at http://www.esri.com. About Farragut Farragut Systems, Inc., (Farragut) has been providing industry-leading GIS and System Integration solutions to government agencies and private corporations since 1993. Farragut supports the entire GIS life cycle, from requirements analysis and implementation planning, through database design and implementation, application development and deployment, and user training. For additional information, visit the Farragut website at http://www.farragut.com. About Hummingbird Hummingbird Ltd. (NASDAQ: HUMC, TSX: HUM) is a leading global provider of enterprise software solutions. Our enterprise content management (ECM) solutions enable organizations to manage the lifecycle of enterprise content from creation to disposition. Hummingbird Enterprise solutions enable organizations to address critical business needs, such as information management, business continuity, compliance and risk mitigation. |
