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Tyler EP&L Business Process Review:
From BPR to a Get To Gold Plan
Chris Smith 📅 August 25, 2026
Tyler Enterprise Permitting & Licensing (EP&L) can become one of the most important systems inside a community development organization.
Building, Planning, Code Enforcement, Business Licensing, Engineering, GIS, Finance, IT, and other departments may all depend on the same environment. Over time, processes change. Staff changes. New functionality becomes available. Reports accumulate. Integrations evolve. Workarounds become normal.
Eventually, organizations can find themselves addressing one EP&L issue after another without stopping to ask a more important question:
Where are we going?
That is the purpose of a Business Process Review (BPR).
At GSD, our Tyler EP&L Business Process Review is an assessment—not an implementation project. The goal is to fully understand the problem before deciding how to solve it.
The result is more than a series of conversations or a list of items that could be addressed today. The municipality receives a written BPR Report documenting what we found and a Get to Gold Plan that turns those findings into a practical roadmap for the next 12 months.
A Tyler EPL BPR Should Start With Your Organization—not Your Ticket List
One of the themes we’ve heard from municipalities is that they still feel responsible for identifying the problems themselves.
Something isn’t working correctly, so staff investigate it. IT gets involved. Someone determines that it may be an EP&L issue. Then the organization brings that issue to its support resources.
That model can work well for resolving individual problems.
But it assumes something important:
You already know what the problems are.
A GSD EP&L Business Process Review approaches the environment differently. We begin with the people actually doing the work.
GSD meets remotely with departments to understand how work happens today, where staff encounter friction, what has changed since implementation, and where EPL may no longer align with the organization’s processes.
Depending on the municipality, that can include Building, Planning, Code Enforcement, Business Licensing, Engineering, GIS, Finance, IT, and other departments involved in development services.
The review may identify opportunities involving Tyler EPL configuration, Civic Access, workflows, fees, notifications, inspections, GIS, SSRS reports, API integrations, testing, training, upgrades, or departmental procedures.
The municipality doesn’t need to hand us a perfect list of problems.
Finding and understanding those problems is part of the BPR.
A BPR Should Give You More Than Things to Fix Today
One piece of feedback from an EP&L municipality particularly stuck with us:
We felt like previous discussions were more of a ‘what can we fix today’ and less ‘here’s a plan going forward.
There is value in identifying something that can be fixed immediately.
But we believe a Business Process Review should answer a larger question.
If we make that change today, where does it take the organization tomorrow?
That’s why GSD separates assessment from execution.
During the BPR, we’re not trying to maximize the number of configuration changes we can make. We’re trying to understand the relationship between the problems.
A workflow issue might actually originate with a departmental process.
A reporting problem could expose inconsistent data collection.
A Civic Access frustration may trace back to configuration or how information moves between departments.
Solving the visible problem without understanding what is underneath it can simply lead to the next problem.
The goal of the BPR is to see
the whole picture first.
The BPR Report: Findings You Can Actually Use
One of the most important deliverables from a GSD Business Process Review is exactly what the name suggests:
A report.
The municipality receives written documentation of the findings identified during the assessment.
Important observations shouldn’t disappear into meeting notes, support tickets, or someone’s memory.
The BPR Report creates a shared reference point for department leadership, IT, system administrators, and executive management. Instead of different groups having different interpretations of what needs attention, everyone can begin from the same documented assessment.
That becomes especially important for organizations where IT has been expected to provide significant Business Analyst support for EP&L.
We’ve heard from municipalities that even with outside EP&L support, they still felt they needed an internal IT Business Analyst to identify issues, coordinate resources, translate departmental needs, follow up on work, and help test proposed resolutions.
For organizations with that resource, the Business Analyst can be extremely valuable.
But not every municipality has one—or should have to create that position simply to make its support model work.
The BPR helps transfer some of that discovery burden away from IT and creates documentation that everyone can work from.
From Business Process Review to a 12-Month Get to Gold Plan
The BPR tells you where you are.
Get to Gold tells you where you’re going.
Every GSD BPR leads into a Get to Gold Plan that organizes the findings into a prioritized roadmap for approximately the next 12 months.
This addresses another challenge we’ve heard from EPL users: having support available doesn’t necessarily eliminate the need for the municipality to plan and schedule the work itself.
Organizations may still find themselves determining what needs to happen next, deciding when to request it, coordinating staff availability, and making sure the right work is ready when support resources become available.
That’s a lot of preemptive planning for a department that may already be stretched thin.
Get to Gold changes the starting point.
Instead of asking every few weeks:
“What should we work on next?”
the organization begins with a documented plan.
Priorities can be established.
Dependencies can be identified.
Testing can be anticipated.
Department involvement can be scheduled.
Budget requirements can be discussed earlier.
The roadmap doesn’t eliminate the need for project management. It makes that project management intentional instead of reactive.
A Roadmap Also Helps Leadership Understand the Investment
Most Community Development departments don’t have unlimited budgets.
When leadership needs additional EP&L resources, the Director may eventually have to explain that need to a CIO, City Manager, Administrator, finance team, or council.
A collection of support tickets makes that conversation difficult.
A documented Business Process Review and Get to Gold Plan tells a much stronger story:
Here is where we are today.
Here are the issues affecting our staff and processes.
Here are our priorities.
Here is what we recommend addressing over the next 12 months.
Here are the resources necessary to get there.
That’s one reason we consider the BPR and Get to Gold Plan one service.
The assessment identifies the issues.
The roadmap turns those findings into something the organization can act upon—and leadership can understand.
Remote, Focused and Generally Completed in Under 30 Days
Remote Interviews.
Completed under 30 days.
The BPR Report
The Get to Gold Plan
Where are we?
Where are we going?
A Business Process Review shouldn’t become another major project for staff to manage.
GSD’s BPR process is designed to be completely remote and can generally be completed in less than 30 days, depending on department availability and the size and complexity of the organization.
Remote interviews allow us to talk directly with the people doing the work without requiring travel, conference rooms, or days of onsite disruption.
And because the engagement is an assessment, the focus remains on understanding the environment rather than trying to squeeze implementation work into the BPR.
At the end, the organization has two tangible deliverables:
Your Get to Gold Roadmap. Your Choice.
This is an important part of the GSD approach.
Completing a BPR does not require you to hire GSD to execute the roadmap.
We actually encourage municipalities to shop it.
Take the Get to Gold Plan to your internal IT team.
Discuss it with Tyler Technologies.
Ask another qualified EP&L consulting firm how they would execute it.
Or ask GSD.
The municipality owns the roadmap.
That independence also gives leadership an opportunity to compare providers based on something more meaningful than an hourly rate or block of available support time.
Here’s what we need accomplished. How would you get us there?
That’s a much better procurement question.
When GSD Is the Right Fit: Go-Between Support
For municipalities that choose GSD for execution, Go-Between Support (GBS) picks up where the BPR and Get to Gold Plan stop.
The distinction is deliberate:
BPR + Get to Gold → Assess and Roadmap
Go-Between Support → Execute and Support
GBS works alongside municipal departments, internal IT, and Tyler Technologies to help move the roadmap forward while supporting the organization’s ongoing EP&L needs..
That distinction also addresses another issue we’ve heard repeatedly: someone still has to own the work.
Someone has to coordinate.
Someone has to follow up.
Someone has to help translate departmental needs into EP&L work.
Someone has to make sure a proposed resolution is tested before everyone celebrates that the ticket is closed.
That’s the role Go-Between Support is designed to help fill.
It doesn’t replace your staff.
It doesn’t replace Tyler.
It helps connect the people responsible for making the environment successful.
Start by Fully Understanding the Problem
A healthy Tyler EP&L environment is never truly finished.
Departments change. Communities grow. Regulations evolve. New EP&L functionality becomes available. Staff learn better ways to work.
The answer isn’t necessarily more support hours.
And it isn’t necessarily another consultant.
Start by understanding what your organization actually needs.
A GSD Tyler EP&L Business Process Review gives you a documented assessment.
The Get to Gold Plan gives you a 12-month direction.
Then you decide who is best qualified to help you execute it.
That’s a model we believe puts the municipality in a much stronger position—regardless of who ultimately performs the work.
Understand the problem. Build the roadmap. Choose the right team.
Are You Ready to GSD?