This episode of the Tyler Tech Podcast features Dennis Click, deputy controller for Albemarle County, Virginia, sharing how the county modernized its financial and procurement operations to improve transparency, efficiency, and staff confidence. Dennis discusses Albemarle County’s shift from multiple disconnected systems to a more streamlined, integrated approach that reduced manual work, strengthened reporting, and expanded self-service across departments and vendors. The conversation highlights how proactive data cleanup, breaking down silos, and empowering staff with better tools led to meaningful operational improvements — an approach that earned Albemarle County a 2025 Tyler Excellence Award. Tune in to learn how modernizing financial operations can create a stronger foundation for smarter decision-making in local government.
In this episode of the Tyler Tech Podcast, Dennis Click, deputy controller for Albemarle County, Virginia, shares how the county modernized its financial and procurement operations — a transformation that earned Albemarle County a 2025 Tyler Excellence Award (TEA).
Recorded live at Tyler Connect 2025 in San Antonio, the conversation explores how Albemarle County moved away from a patchwork of disconnected systems that limited transparency and slowed day-to-day work. Dennis walks through the county’s journey to streamline processes, break down departmental silos, and improve access to real-time financial data, including the role Tyler’s Enterprise ERP played in bringing tools and workflows onto a single, connected platform.
Dennis also highlights the behind-the-scenes work that set the stage for success, from early data cleanup and chart of accounts modernization to change management and staff enablement. The results include reduced manual entry, improved procurement timelines, stronger reporting, expanded self-service capabilities, and a noticeable boost in confidence across the organization.
Whether you support finance, procurement, or technology in government, this episode offers practical insight into building a stronger operational foundation, empowering teams, and using modern systems to free staff for higher-value work while better serving the community.
This episode also spotlights Tyler Connect 2026, where innovation and collaboration take center stage. Taking place April 7–10 at The Venetian Resort in Las Vegas. Connect brings together public sector professionals from across the country to explore new solutions, share ideas, and strengthen communities. It’s a week dedicated to learning, connection, and imagining what’s possible for the future of government technology. Explore registration details and early bird pricing in the show notes to start planning your Connect 2026 experience.
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Dennis Click: Prior to implementing Enterprise ERP, we had roughly four distinct systems that we would use to get the same level of financial transparency. But after our transition to Enterprise ERP, we’ve integrated these into a single platform that improves data transparency for all the departments across the county.
Josh Henderson: From Tyler Technologies, this is the Tyler Tech Podcast, where we explore the trends, technologies, and people shaping the public sector.
I’m your host, Josh Henderson. Thanks for joining us. In this episode recorded live at Tyler Connect 2025 in San Antonio, we’re highlighting a story that will resonate with any public sector leader managing complex financial operations. For many government organizations, outdated systems and disconnected processes create challenges ranging from data inconsistencies to time consuming manual work, and that was the reality for Albemarle County, Virginia until they took steps to modernize their approach. I’m thrilled to welcome Dennis Click, deputy controller for Albemarle County and a 2025 Tyler Excellence Award winner to share how the county streamlined financial and procurement operations with Enterprise ERP and the meaningful impact they’ve seen since. There’s so much to unpack here, so let’s dive right in.
Dennis, thanks so much for joining me.
Dennis Click: Oh, it’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me.
Josh Henderson: Now let’s start with what things looked like before. What challenges was the county facing with its previous financial and procurement systems?
Dennis Click: Yeah, so prior to implementing Enterprise ERP, we had roughly four distinct systems that we would use to get the same level of financial transparency. We had a dedicated procurement system, a four financial system, a SQL server reporting, SQL service reporting server, and we used Bank of America’s Works platform.
But after our transition to Enterprise ERP, we’ve integrated these into a single platform that improves data transparency for all the departments across the county.
So, kind of eliminating some of those silos that existed beforehand. Breaking down the silos, increasing transparency, and also interoperability between not only departments, but also roles.
Josh Henderson: That’s great. Now facing those challenges, what ultimately drove the decision to modernize and move forward with Enterprise ERP, and what outcomes were you hoping to achieve in the initial stages?
Dennis Click: So, when we initially started planning for our transition, we had several products that were reaching end of life on their support status. We used a product called ePro for procurement, which had just been on a support only contract for some time. And then we also had Microsoft Great Plains, which is not really utilized in favor anymore. You’re not seeing rapid development. So, looking to integrate those.
That was one of the main drivers and bring our own finance offices in line with the view of the whole finance department. We have quite a large finance department. We wanted to increase that interaction to make more efficiency.
Josh Henderson: That’s great. Now, once you made the decision, what can you tell me about the implementation journey? Any lessons learned along the way that other agencies might benefit from hearing?
Dennis Click: What I would say contributed most to the success of our implementation is we looked at it as getting our data ready, not waiting for the implementation to start before we did any cleanup or modernization.
So, we took about a one year path pre-implementation, where we went through our customer records, purged any duplicates or inactives for more than two years. We did the same for our vendor records, and we did the same for our chart of accounts.
And with a little bit of knowledge on how a Tyler ERP chart of accounts looks, we said, hey, we have up to eight segments, utilizable. What should we change about our chart, and how do we get it in a more compliant position?
And these actions, they helped us plan for where we wanted to go without bringing strangleholds from our legacy systems in with us that would just weigh us down in a new environment.
Josh Henderson: Yeah, that’s great. Being proactive, it sounds like, is a huge part of it.
Dennis Click: Well, and being proactive to get ready for a system that lets you be less reactive, it’s just getting you in the mindset where you’re going to be able to really accomplish your goals in the future and your people are already feeling that burning passion to get in there and keep things clean and modern, which we found was very helpful as we started to train them on how to keep the system clean so that we have effective month end closes at Tyler.
Josh Henderson: And like you’ve touched on, the results you’ve seen so far have been quite impressive, you know, from reducing manual entry to improving procurement timelines and reporting, streamlining things along the way. Can you walk us through some of the most meaningful impacts for your team and the county overall? What is what are some of the things you’ve heard?
Dennis Click: So probably some of the most meaningful impacts are that people have more confidence. There’s automatic deduplication of invoices. Invoices go in one at a time, which did concern people at first, but we were able to build custom interfaces to make sure that you’re only entering invoice data that’s relevant to our processing.
And whether you go on vacation, you’re out sick, somebody else picks up, they never have to worry about a duplicate invoice.
Also, you have less vendor interaction with the new self-service portal, which we’re slowly rolling out in waves, because people can log on there, they can see their invoice status, they can get a copy of their purchase order, they can see if a check’s been cut or an electronic payment dispatch, and those are all interactions that took very expensive employee time, but are now just part of the system and part of a self-service module.
Josh Henderson: Stay tuned. We’ll be right back with more of the Tyler Tech Podcast.
Big news. Tyler Connect 2026 is heading to Las Vegas.
Jade Champion: Join us April 7-10 at The Venetian Resort Las Vegas for an unforgettable week of learning, collaboration, and connection.
Josh Henderson: Connect unites public sector professionals to explore new Tyler solutions and to spark ideas that strengthen and empower communities.
Jade Champion: And now’s your chance to save $250 with early bird pricing.
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Jade Champion: Visit tylertech.com/connect to register today or click the link in our show notes.
Josh Henderson: We’ll see you at Tyler Connect 2026 where we empower, collaborate, and imagine what’s possible for the public sector in Vegas.
Jade Champion: Now let’s get back to the Tyler Tech Podcast.
Josh Henderson: Now one thing we hear about a lot too is, you know, workforce efficiency, the need for workforce efficiency, kind of losing some of the workforce as well contributes to some of the needs for that efficiency.
One thing that really stands out is how reducing manual tasks freed up staff for higher value work as well. How has this changed the day to day experience for your team, and how does it impact your ability to serve the community?
Dennis Click: So, we are currently embarking on a project to do more financial reporting preparation in house. We’re able to dedicate more staff to our P Card audit program, all because these are people that are not manually entering invoices that were batched in or transmitted across. Now, we’ve been able to decentralize more of that activity out to the departments, that they have confidence, Tyler’s advanced workflows, and the ability to have the procurement, budget, and accounting products all completely interconnected, it has alleviated a lot of that cross checking that slowed down individuals in their day to day activity.
Josh Henderson: Excellent. And now reporting is also such a critical function for transparency and decision making. How has the county improved the ability to create timely, accurate reporting reports?
Dennis Click: So, one of the biggest things that we’ve been able to do is we’ve utilized the Centrals. I usually recommend the Centrals to people that are managing one or a few departments because they do have record reporting limitations. You might only get a thousand records back out of a central, but they’re accessible and instant for just about anybody with real time filtering. So, we’ve been recommending those as a primary research tool to our individual departments, which again, has lessened their interaction with complex SSRS reports that can be slower to run.
It’s lessened their outreach for us to manually create documents that give them what they’re looking for, whether that being, did a check clear? You see it on your own screen. Does this account reconcile or why doesn’t it? They can drill down the account in Essential and see all the transaction activity.
If they have a question on a particular transaction, everything is available in Tyler Content Manager. They don’t have to have us pull it from a separate document management system.
So really, we gain our efficiency through empowering people to be their own agent of research.
Josh Henderson: Love to hear that. That’s great.
Now, as you look forward to the county’s future, how do you see your digital solutions continuing to support Albemarle and the goals that you’re looking to accomplish?
Any plans for further optimization or expansion in that regard?
Dennis Click: Yeah. So, we’re very excited about some phase two opportunities.
Our first phase is really just fully leveraging the tools that we already have. Okay.
We’ve been writing a lot of custom reporting, which we’re keeping a little sweet to empower people in ways that we couldn’t prior. Like we have a report that we run of unallocated P Card transactions so we can get metrics and follow-up and do additional training with departments. But phase two beyond that, we’re building out our contract database to provide a more searchable portal for departments so that they can more efficiently utilize services that we’ve worked hard to negotiate on their behalf.
Josh Henderson: And now for other government leaders looking to, you know, modernize or whatever it might be, for those who are listening who might be challenged with outdated systems and manual processes, what advice would you share based on the experience that you’ve had at the county?
Dennis Click: So, I’d say that you have to build a use case for why you should modernize your systems. If you come up and say, hey, this puts a lot of work on my payroll accounts, you might not quite get the traction you’re hoping for because you may get the answer of, well, they get it done.
However, if you can look at ways, they’d be able to carry a larger grant load because you now have free time to go pursue these items or maintain compliance, or if you’re able to get better budgeting data in, like Tyler’s budget module, it’s not just the line items. You have notes. You can make attachments.
If you can look at things that’ll support like priority based budgeting and help you achieve those higher efficiencies, if you can translate that into real world cost savings or keeping the property tax rates lower, that’s where you’re going to get tractions where people say, Hey, modernization really can benefit us in a dollar and cents perspective.
Josh Henderson: A lot of people will love to hear that. I think it’s great advice. Dennis, thank you so much for sharing Albemarle County’s story. Congratulations again on your Tyler Excellence Award, and we appreciate you taking the time to be on podcast.
Dennis Click: It’s been my pleasure, Josh. Thank you so much.
Josh Henderson: As we heard today, Albemarle County’s move to Tyler’s Enterprise ERP has created a stronger, more connected foundation for financial operations, reducing manual processes, improving transparency, and empowering staff with tools that support smarter decision making.
Dennis walked us through how data cleanup, thoughtful planning, and embracing modern workflows allowed the county to streamline procurement, strengthen reporting, and make every day work more efficient across departments. It’s the kind of meaningful progress that contributed to Albemarle County being recognized with a 2025 Tyler Excellence Award.
If you’d like to learn more about the solutions discussed today, check out the show notes for additional resources, and we’d love to hear your thoughts. Fill out the listener survey linked in the notes or reach out anytime at podcast@tylertech.com. And be sure to subscribe, rate, and review the show so you never miss an episode.
For Tyler Technologies, I’m Josh Henderson. Thanks for listening to the Tyler Tech Podcast.