GOVERNMENT BUSINESS

Accela and Avolve Announce New Reseller Partnership to Streamline Plan Reviews for State and Local Government

Accela | September 28, 2021

Accela®, the leading provider of cloud-based solutions for state and local government, and Avolve Software, today announced a new reseller partnership, building on their foundations of expertise in digitally transforming business processes for state and local government. Accela and Avolve have strengthened their partnership over the past decade, and bring together two industry-leading technologies into a robust solution for permitting and electronic plan review, all delivered on Microsoft Azure.

Together through this partnership, Avolve and Accela can provide an unparalleled experience for applicants and plan reviewers at building agencies. ProjectDox, Avolve's electronic plan review solution, also provides proven business processes for public works, planning, engineering, fire, and any agency with a plan review requirement. As a result of Avolve and Accela's partnership, jurisdictions can now eliminate paper and PDF/email plan submissions, as well as conduct concurrent online plan reviews - all while communicating project status back into Accela's Civic Application for Building. With Avolve and Accela, agencies can achieve improved collaboration, transparency and process insight, resulting in lower costs, faster review cycles and a streamlined experience for both residents and agency staff.

"Avolve is excited to formalize our relationship after working with Accela for more than a decade, with dozens of mutual customers throughout North America. As part of our applicant experience focus in our new ProjectDox 9.2, we created a new Accela Citizen Access integration that provides a seamless applicant experience with self-serve status insight on their plan review as it is progressing. Both organizations have strategically aligned with Microsoft to deploy our mutual customers on the Azure cloud, which additionally improves the performance, security and scalability of the integrated solutions."

Avolve CEO Gary Heath

Salt Lake City, Utah has relied on the Avolve+Accela solution for more than a decade, and ePlan reduced plan approval times for the city by as much as 50%, saving days and even weeks. After implementing Avolve+Accela, Salt Lake City also began tracking environmental conservation savings, and the estimated reductions are significant: 360,000 fewer miles driven by applicants; 512,000 fewer pounds of printed paper; 2,300 fewer pounds of hydrocarbons released into the atmosphere. Additionally, in light of current health and safety challenges, both staff and citizens are able to continue operations in a safe, online environment.

"We are thrilled to grow our partnership with Avolve and expand Accela's network of trusted technology alliances that help government agencies streamline critical plan review processes on Microsoft Azure. Technology plays a critical role in helping governments serve their constituents and simplify permitting and plan reviews. Accela is committed to aligning with partners, like Avolve, to deliver the best cloud-based solutions to governments and help them provide essential community services."

Tom Nieto, chief operating officer at Accela

The value of Avolve and Accela's complementary technologies is exponentially enhanced when deployed on Microsoft Azure. This combined rich solution assures jurisdictions that their information is secure, removes onerous IT requirements, and eliminates the headaches of upgrading to future versions.

By relying on Accela, Avolve, and Microsoft, agencies can deliver a seamless citizen and staff experience, improved review process visibility, up to a 60% increase in plan review efficiencies, and a thorough security and audit trail. The new reseller partnership makes it easier than ever for jurisdictions to acquire the complete permitting and plan review solution on Microsoft's cloud environment in a single procurement.

Accela delivers innovative, market-leading SaaS solutions that help governments worldwide to build thriving communities, grow businesses, and protect citizens' services. With Accela, state and local governments can unlock the power of the cloud and offer more modern services, simplify critical workflows, optimize costs and accelerate digitization. In total, Accela delivers leading cloud-based solutions to 80% of the top 100 U.S. cities and strengthens communities for more than 275 million citizens globally.

About Avolve Software
Avolve's suite of ePlan Life Cycle products brings efficiency and ease to submitting, reviewing, approving, storing and accessing building plans and data within your jurisdiction. Over 150+ cities and counties in the US and Canada use ProjectDox ePlan Review and one in every five citizens live in jurisdictions served by ProjectDox.  Avolve has over 1000 deployed plan review processes, with over 2 million plan reviews performed on more than 100 million plan set files.  Leading the industry for 15 years, our depth of ePlan process knowledge and services experience is unrivaled.

About Accela
Accela provides market-leading cloud solutions that empower the most innovative state and local governments around the world to build thriving communities, grow businesses, and protect citizens. More than 275 million citizens globally benefit from Accela's solutions, which are powered by Azure, for permitting, licensing, code enforcement, and service request management. Accela's fast-to-implement Civic Applications, built on its robust and extensible Civic Platform, help agencies address specific needs today, while ensuring they are prepared for any emerging or complex challenges in the future. The company was recently recognized as a 2021 Microsoft US Partner Award winner for its innovative SaaS solutions to help governments respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, and was named as one of the Largest East Bay Tech Employers by San Francisco Business Times. Accela is headquartered in San Ramon, California, with additional offices around the world.

Spotlight

The virtual private network (VPN) has been a powerful tool in the network security administrator’s toolbox for decades, because it has provided a means for remote computers to communicate securely across an untrusted network such as the internet. Whether for branch offices communicating with headquarters (siteto-site), or an employee working from home (remote access), the VPN provided a secure point-to-point tunnel back to resources on protected networks.

Spotlight

The virtual private network (VPN) has been a powerful tool in the network security administrator’s toolbox for decades, because it has provided a means for remote computers to communicate securely across an untrusted network such as the internet. Whether for branch offices communicating with headquarters (siteto-site), or an employee working from home (remote access), the VPN provided a secure point-to-point tunnel back to resources on protected networks.

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