The sudden growth in London boroughs adopting inexpensive systems from SMEs shows new government requirements have opened the door to better value in IT procurement. This is significantly reducing costs to taxpayers, while providing more efficient services.
The important London boroughs of Corporation of London, Southwark, Lambeth, Camden, Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea, Hammersmith & Fulham, and Richmond upon Thames have joined a list of 45 public sector bodies adopting straightforward, SaaS hosted products, costing significantly less than traditional, bespoke solutions by larger companies.
The company behind this client-list, Apply4 Technology, is a newcomer to central government’s Digital Marketplace, now welcome to compete under the reforms to IT procurement. As a result the reduced costs, automatic updates and digital efficiencies of SaaS platforms provided by SMEs can be made available to government departments and the public sector.
Apply4 director Andrew Pavord says, “The ability for public sector bodies to benefit from inexpensive SaaS solutions means that common sense has prevailed. New procurement regulations are enabling more nimble solutions to be adopted across government, in favour of hugely expensive – and quickly outdated – bespoke systems.”
Southwark Council’s head of events and film, Paul Cowell says, “Southwark Council has always been among the first to adopt Apply4’s solutions as they become available, upgrading our online services to residents and businesses while keeping costs to a minimum.”
Mr Cowell says the implementation of Apply4 products FilmApp and EventApp has seen excellent results.
He adds, “Inexpensive systems now can deliver robust software, via a normal web browser, with automatic updates as standard, without requiring resources from an in-house IT team.”
Apply4 Technology’s flagship product FilmApp was designed to meet the highly complicated and time-sensitive requirements of film permitting across the disparate authorities of London boroughs, UK cities, and their various departments.
Mr Pavord says, “Big budget feature films now choose to shoot in London, putting enormous pressure on local councils and their many services, from traffic, parking, property and parks to police liaison and public works. FilmApp was developed to help councils deliver the necessary permitting as well as to manage the very-welcome revenues generated.
“As a result productions filming across multiple authorities such as James Bond, Mission Impossible 5, Suffragette, Night in the Museum, Imitation Game and many others have been accommodated efficiently and safely.”
Having met this very high bar, clients began to ask for other permitting solutions. Apply4 responded with EventApp and WorksApp for licensing events and public works respectively, and is currently developing MarketApp for licensing market stalls.
As an indication of cost, EventApp costs £2,500 to configure and implement, along with an ongoing fee of £2,000 a year – covering 24-hour tech support, hosting, training and regular upgrades. This is significantly less than IT contracts for similar services could traditionally be expected to cost.
Visit www.apply4.com for more information.
