CAMACloud in South-Central Washington

The Challenge

Benton County is situated in the south-central portion of the state of Washington. Due to its proximity to Seattle, Portland, and Boise, the county is a popular destination for sports tournaments, festivals, agri-tourism, and other attractions.

With over 82,000 parcels within the county and an outdated, inefficient paper system, Benton wanted to implement a digital solution to improve workflows and better track property information.

The Solution

Using MobileAssessor® has enabled Benton to develop an internal tracking system for their properties to improve efficiency. Before MobileAssessor, Benton did not have an internal tracking system, which resulted in missing or incorrectly identified properties. Now, as Bill explained, “MobileAssesssor has not only provided us to get more done in less time, but the accuracy and quality of information gathered is being tracked and audited.”

MobileAssessor has also helped Benton streamline its quality control process. Instead of taking weeks to comb through data and start the quality control process, appraisers can make real-time edits in the field using a mobile device to verify information. Data collected by appraisers syncs directly to CAMA – saving valuable time and labor costs associated with cleaning up data after an appraiser evaluates a property. As Bill said, “in the first year alone we saved roughly $177,000, that is $2.31 per parcel, and this was just with MobileAssessor.”

Along with MobileAssessor, Benton has used Desktop Review to integrate data assets into a synchronized system with customizable workflows to remotely verify parcels. This integration allows appraisers to spend more time evaluating properties and less time managing files and verifying they are on the correct parcel. In addition, using Sketch Validation has allowed Benton to verify property dimensions using satellite imagery, resulting in more accurate property records. This module has also saved appraisers a great deal of time and improved property data.

Working with Woolpert

Benton started working with Woolpert in 2017. When asked about his experience working with Woolpert, Benton County Assessor Bill Spencer said, “Woolpert has been a great partner, and we had a seamless integration. Opening CAMACloud® to the appraisers and allowing them to run their own weekly reports has not only saved me time every week, but it’s pulled the veil a little bit regarding how the whole process works.”

“With MobileAssessor, revaluation numbers have increased on average from approximately 20-30 in a day, to 50 and, at times, over 100! We expect these numbers to continue to increase.”