A Buyer’s Guide for Natural
Resource Agencies
Contents
- Executive Summary
- Modernizing service delivery
- What you deserve from any tech vendor
- One platform, with many use cases
- It’s all about the experience
- Drive customer engagement to conservation goals
- The technical stuff
- Find a partner, not just a vendor
- Start with the end in mind
- Key questions to shape the dialogue
- DNR buyer’s checklist
Executive Summary
PayIt serves more than 100 million people in North America, and we’ve worked with numerous natural resource agencies to better serve outdoors enthusiasts through advanced technology. Natural resource agencies’ conservation missions depend on engaged customers, reliable revenue streams, and tools that grow participation and relevance. Choosing the right platform is a key part of driving the right outcomes.
This guide helps natural resource agencies define digital engagement and business software requirements and evaluate vendors — specifically with R3, customer engagement, and relevancy efforts in mind. Here are the main points we’ll cover:
The right solution should help engage and serve outdoors enthusiasts anytime, in every season, and empower everyone to make decisions from a single source of truth.
Modernizing natural resource agency service delivery
Public sector leaders have assigned urgency to digital service delivery, recognizing its benefits to drive consumer trust, agency efficiency, and workforce satisfaction — and they continue to consider channel shift a top priority.
In fact, respondents in PayIt’s 2024 Digital Government Adoption Index Report set an average target of 65% online adoption in the next 1-2 years, and when asked to select which three features are most important when choosing a customer experience and digital payments platform, “easy for residents to use” was a top priority for most. Natural resource agencies, specifically, have named “efficient delivery of programs and services’’ as a key element of their modernization efforts.
Natural resource agencies need vendors that can adapt to changing fish and wildlife management rules and agency business processes. But they usually find themselves saddled with clunky on-premise software, complex and siloed systems, and unresponsive vendors who fail to innovate.
Digital modernization and customer experience is critical for natural resource agencies. With a sizeable amount of funding — 50 to 80% — coming from license sales and federal excise taxes, they must prioritize the delivery of a reliable, easy-to-use license purchase experience and customer engagement programs. Failure to do both threatens the achievement of conservation missions.
The good news is that it’s possible to significantly improve efficiency and customer engagement by carefully evaluating vendors against the right criteria.
This guide will help business leadership, resource managers, R3 and marketing coordinators, and IT professionals define purchase criteria and evaluate vendor offerings against them. It addresses customer engagement, relationship management, and license sales.
Use this guide to inform requirements as you develop an RFI or RFP, and to evaluate vendors who submit proposals. Combined with your team’s insight, this guide will help you identify the best possible vendor to upgrade your system.
Here’s what you deserve from any tech vendor
Not all technology providers are created equal — dinosaur technology, dated business models, and unfamiliarity with conservation and the unique demands placed on natural resource agencies are the norm.
This section will help you identify vendors that are suitable for where you want to go in the future, not where you’ve been. Apply these criteria to evaluate any vendor across the spectrum of outdoor recreation technology.
Innovation happens in the cloud
The days of cumbersome on-prem software systems are over.
The downsides of on-premise software systems are significant. This antiquated approach to software leaves conservation agencies in the cold when the technology inevitably ages, business requirements change, or the system fails. When these issues occur, the fix is typically quite costly — in time and in money.
In response, public sector technology buyers have increasingly recognized the value of cloud-based software: rapid innovation, continuous delivery of new features and bug fixes, and the ability to troubleshoot issues in real time, from anywhere.
Cloud-hosted software systems extend better security than traditional on-prem software because they include the most current infosec protections at the infrastructure level. And when it comes to scalability, cloud systems provide the opportunity to “pay as you go” for computing capacity — crucial to ensure that seasonal peak demand is handled without a hiccup, without having to pay for that capacity during periods of lower volume.
A final benefit of cloud-based software-as-a-service that is often overlooked: the ability to conduct a gradual implementation without a high-stakes mass data migration from the legacy system. Specific services and features can be launched in stages, providing an opportunity to ensure that one phase of the project is successful before moving to the next.
Configurability, not customization
Local laws, regulations, and unique state-specific needs mean that every natural resource agency has a different way of operating, leading to specific technology requirements.
For the best results, look for a vendor that has both configurable software and a seasoned team.
A configurable software solution is made of “building blocks” that can be built and shaped to address various workflows, data models, integrations, and seasonal or annual updates. These modules can be quickly adjusted and redeployed as your agency’s needs evolve, creating a resilient, dynamic solution. Configurability enables your team to be self-reliant and avoid time-consuming development cycles and expensive change requests.
An experienced team of engineers can work with your agency to configure a platform specifically to meet your agency’s business rules. And having technical staff (like configuration managers) who understand the outdoors community makes it easier to maintain end-user focus. Similarly, a team that’s familiar with outdoor pursuits can help your agency maximize the CRM platform to reach R3 goals.
Ask your vendors about how their solution adapts as new use cases emerge. If the task is beyond the scope of self-service, will they be there to help reconfigure or create more custom code? Include IT staff in this evaluation to pressure-test the vendor’s claims.
High performance, even at peak demand
License draws, application windows, and season openings can all cause a surge in demand from customers — and the last thing your agency needs is a crash. Don’t just take vendors’ word: Ask them for actual data about uptime and resource consumption during times of peak demand, and their technical approach to scaling capacity.
Government-grade platform security
Choosing cloud over on-premise is the right move. But commercial-grade cloud solutions are not designed to handle highly sensitive government data. There is more detail on security later in this guide, but any vendor should be able to clearly outline how they meet or exceed public sector security requirements.
Built-in payments functionality
Make sure compliant payment processing is built into the platform. A platform that has payments integrated is more secure (because you aren’t stitching systems together), requires less implementation and maintenance work, and gives your team a dashboard they can use to monitor revenue and manage money more easily. Integrated payments lower the risk you take on and provide customers an intuitive, secure experience.
Fewer failed transactions
Cobbling together a digital shopping cart and a payment gateway from different providers results in a clunky user experience at best. Moving a customer journey out of one environment into another — exactly at the moment they are meant to enter payment data — introduces confusion and doubt to a process that requires high trust. Alternatively, the user may find themselves in a cul-de-sac from which they cannot easily go back to double-check a previous step. This kind of clunkiness means that transaction success rates are lower when payment functionality is not native and optimized for the experience.
Fighting off fraud
Fraud detection is more effective in systems that deeply integrate the customer identity and experience with built-in payments functionality. Suspicious behavior can be flagged upstream of the transaction, preventing an intrusion before a financial transaction is attempted.
Digital money moves faster
Consumers who encounter a friendly experience are more likely to successfully complete their transaction on the first try. Disbursements of funds can happen on an every-business-day basis. And features such as auto-renewal, for example, improve the timeliness of payment so your agency can improve time to revenue.
Financial tools that work for conservation teams
When payment functionality is native in the system, things like reconciliation, chargebacks, and reporting are more seamless. This means that your team can operate more autonomously to support customers and operate efficiently — without having to square up financial data across systems or be beholden to a payments vendor that operates without knowledge of how your agency operates.
There are many ways to pay — but focus on the ones you need
Most vendors support multiple channels and methods for payment. Understand what good looks like for your customers and set payment method requirements from there. And since customer preferences and behaviors evolve over time, choose a vendor in whose innovation you are confident so that you can evolve alongside those preferences.
The human dimensions of great software
Software designed for humans
Technology shouldn’t be a chore for consumers or your team to use. Tasks should be intuitive, even for solutions used by technical users.
Your vendor should leverage human-centered design practices to build their product and deliver the best user experience — both for customers and your staff.
Picture the person in your life who is the least sophisticated about tech: Could they readily understand the workflow?
Accessibility is a first thought, not an afterthought
Conservation agencies and nonprofits work to improve access to the outdoors for people with disabilities or who face other challenges in getting to hunt or fish. Ensuring that licensing technology is accessible is an important first step alongside programs for adapted hunting and fishing experiences. A solution lacking standard accessibility measures alienates employees and customers and can leave you exposed to civil action and costly web redesigns. Only engage solution providers who meet or exceed WCAG 2.0 AA requirements.
Team players
Vendors are only as good as the teams behind them. Find a provider who can demonstrate that they will work closely with you long after your solution is live. Understand how they measure your success and ensure that you achieve your goals through continued account support. Ask for and interview references, ideally from agencies who have similar challenges as you. Ask them about the vendor’s responsiveness, ability to solve problems, and commitment to conservation.
One platform, with many use cases — designed for the outdoors community
Find a customer experience that’s simple and efficient to use
Along with secure payment processing, the customer experience should also help collect information for biologists and R3 initiatives; support donations to conservation funds; offer gift cards; and remember past purchases for possible upsells.
A good workflow includes:
- Intuitive user interface (UI) elements
- A strong feedback loop (e.g., immediate confirmation of a license purchase)
- Stored history for transactions, associated receipts, and official permits, licenses, or tags
A good experience includes:
- Managed relationships / family accounts
- Contextual information to foster confidence and mirror the experience of having a conversation with a customer service representative or store clerk
Ask your vendor to demonstrate the experience and discuss why they designed it the way they did. Experience the workflow yourself as a user. Ask for data about the rate at which digital users contact customer support after getting stuck or being unable to complete a transaction — anything above 5% should be a red flag.
Get a true CRM to engage customers and drive R3 outcomes
A vendor that’s dedicated to R3 and conservation will have a true CRM built specifically for fish and wildlife agencies, so you can foster better relationships with your customers. Evaluate any CRM to ensure it is directly integrated with your licensing system so that you can build fully automated and evergreen marketing campaigns free from costly and time-consuming workarounds (like pulling a distribution list from one system and using it in another). Also look for list hygiene best practices, data visualizations of key metrics, the ability to test and measure lift, and detailed information on customer demographics and interests.
Ask the vendor for evidence that their customers have increased R3 outcomes for their customers. Do they have data to back up their marketing and recruitment efforts? How do they conduct experiments and tests to demonstrate the impact of their CRM?
Check to see if the vendor offers guidance on using their tool in a manner consistent with R3 best practices. They should be able to help you jump-start your engagement and outreach efforts.
Customer choices should include:
Look for a solution that provides access to all types of interactions, all in one central location, with an account that stores payment credentials, licenses, permits, and transaction history.
A unified experience
All too often, customers struggle to find the information they need — whether it’s buried on a clunky site or on another website altogether. And outdated platforms can lack account history and an appropriate feedback loop. This disjointed experience frustrates users and makes it difficult to provide user support.
It’s all about the experience
Make it simple for users
Delivering a simple, modern experience for customers sounds nice but it’s so much more than that. A great experience is the foundation for natural resource agencies to be more effective, equitable, and efficient.
Digital benefits conservation agencies and their customers
While some outdoors enthusiasts prefer to purchase a license at a retail counter, the balance is increasingly shifting to a preference for digital. Now more than ever, consumers have come to expect digital-first experiences, and getting a hunting or fishing license is no different.
Great online experiences improve trust in government. Research by Deloitte indicates that when a customer rates an agency’s digital services as easy to use, their trust in that agency is nearly four times higher than those who have a neutral assessment of those services.
Trust is built through an online experience that conveys transparency, legitimacy, and security. Customers should see the official seal of your agency, detailed account history, and clear security messaging. Similarly, regulations and current licenses or permits should be clearly displayed so there are fewer challenges for people when they’re out hunting or fishing. This kind of experience drives repeat usage.
There are also important benefits to conservation agencies when more customers use digital channels:
- When a customer journey takes place entirely digitally, the conservation agency can control the customer experience from start to finish
- Digital transactions establish a direct relationship between the agency and the customer, providing a set of zero- and first-party data that can fuel sophisticated R3 campaigns
- Digital interactions also provide insight into what users care about, what topics they research, and products or events they are interested in
Make it simple for natural resource agencies and law enforcement
A great user experience isn’t just for consumers. Your team probably deals with more than a few repetitive processes and manual workarounds. A solution for digital service delivery should be as easy to own and manage on the back end as it is for customers on the front end.
A great agency experience empowers users with a wide range of functionalities, including licensing and permitting, volunteer and event management, off-highway recreational vehicle titling and registrations, and mobile applications for law enforcement.
Look for vendors who go beyond a “buy license” button. Providing a secure website to remit payment is not a modern license solution. Find a system that:
- Makes it easy for your team to define purchase eligibility, set quantity limits, manage seasonal draws, establish pricing dependencies, and handle refunds and voids
- Allows resource managers to easily track hunter effort, success, and harvest characteristics
- Includes a CRM that enables the agency to engage, retain, and communicate with consumers
Drive customer engagement to achieve conservation goals
Many vendors treat customer engagement and R3 efforts as an afterthought. This dated approach creates a fragmented experience that puts the burden on the consumer to know critical dates, lottery license rules, and other pertinent information — making it more likely that people miss opportunities to get outdoors.
Service providers should go beyond the volume of successful transactions as the sole indication of success. Ask about a vendor’s success handling high-traffic days and surges of activities around lotteries. Ask about how the vendor can help you execute strategies to grow hunting and fishing participation. Look for growth in online transactions, auto-renewal sign-ups, registered users, and revenue.
Ask the vendor how they could further leverage and build upon your agency’s R3 initiative (e.g., marketing strategy, content creation and/or delivery, or license trend evaluation). And ask the vendor if they track and measure tactics. Do they have data about how they have supported other clients in driving R3 outcomes?
A true partner will be invested in your R3 strategy and help ensure your success. And don’t settle for generic tactics; you operate in a unique market and you need a partner who understands this and is fully engaged with the conservation community.
A good dashboard keeps you on track
It’s important to understand your customers, their interests, and how they’re interacting with your digital services — and this requires visibility on the back end.
Find a solution that offers analytics including engagement reporting (like click-through rates and conversion rates), transaction details, and transaction management (refunds, etc.). This informs marketing strategy, allows for more personalized communication, and provides a line of sight into observable trends in revenue flows that help you continue to improve agency outcomes and end-user engagement.
The solution should also allow your team to fulfill reporting requirements. Look for dashboards that make it easy for agencies to submit federal reports for license sales.
Going digital with licenses
Millions of people per year seek out hunting and fishing licenses, but getting a traditional, durable paper license can be frustrating and time-consuming (since a physical copy at times requires customers to wait for it to be mailed or they have to drive to a store to get a license). They’re also incredibly expensive for agencies to provide. And, they are easily forgotten as people hurry to get out on the water or into the field.
Digital licenses make sense for both natural resource agencies and customers:
- Less likely to get lost or forgotten at home
- Immediately available on a customer’s device (without having to travel or wait for the mail)
- Younger customers in particular are accustomed to digital documents
- Improved harvest reporting opportunities for agencies
- Simple auto-renewal capabilities retain customers, increasing participation and revenue
- Streamlined license and ID verification for law enforcement officers
Technology is playing a growing role in conservation – for hunters, anglers, and agency professionals alike.
The technical stuff
Open APIs connect the conservation mission
Application programming interfaces (APIs) connect systems and data sets — a common need for government agencies both within and across jurisdictions, and now the norm among leading vendors.
Your vendors should offer open APIs to (almost) any system. Conservation organizations need to work together on emerging issues such as Chronic Wasting Disease and poaching prevention. Similarly, real progress on R3 requires cross-agency collaboration.
A few examples of the usefulness of an open API setup:
Interstate Wildlife Violators Compact: An agreement (fed through API) that helps resource agencies work together to track poachers and ensure they cannot purchase other licenses across the United States
Southwick Data dashboards: Allows agencies to share trend data to fuel national conservation decisions and enable collaboration on R3 initiatives
Hunter education: Data is pulled into licensing systems via API to confirm an individual has (or hasn’t) completed a hunter safety course
Easing the process for out-of-state visitors to procure a license by allowing them to opt to share their data and profile from a different state’s system
The right vendor helps improve your security posture
It goes without saying that security is critical in every industry, and the government is no different. Security breaches can cost millions to resolve and destroy customer trust. Security requirements are always evolving, and as you evaluate vendors, you should closely scrutinize their level of sophistication for compliance and security.
PCI is just the beginning
Any payments vendor should have expertise in PCI compliance. Your solution provider should not rely on your agency to handle the extensive protocols and regular system testing.
Choose a vendor that offers a fully hosted solution on a government-grade cloud platform that prioritizes security. Your vendor should work with you to reduce your PCI burden by driving interactions online, where they handle the security and compliance measures.
But keep in mind that PCI compliance is table stakes. Look for vendors that exceed baseline security and compliance requirements and whose systems are designed to prevent malicious attacks and data exposure. Vendors should also be SOC Type 1 and Type 2 compliant, ensuring rigorous, effective internal accounting, IT, and security controls to protect customers.
Handling customer payment data on your own networks is risky, costly, and time-consuming. If your department accepts payments in offices, over the phone, or manually enters credentials from mailed payments, you are required to be in compliance with PCI security measures.
A good vendor will go beyond making it possible to accept online payments, saving you money and time that would have been spent training, monitoring, and auditing your clerks and systems for PCI compliance.
A government-grade cloud
Every major cloud hosting provider has an offering designed for government agencies. These bring government-grade security protocols and isolate data from their private sector offerings. Mingling government and private sector data on a commercial cloud instance is risky because the commercial cloud has lower barriers to entry and doesn’t adhere to the cloud protocols set by the U.S. Department of Defense.
Government cloud databases are built with additional defense measures to ensure the security of government data. These include compliance with FedRAMP High, DoD Security Requirements Guide, Impact Level 5, and CJIS. Make sure there is a vetting process that offers credentials only to verified government entities, contractors, and educational institutions.
Expect your provider to host your data in a government-grade cloud, particularly if they are also serving private-sector clients. These include AWS GovCloud, Microsoft Azure Government, and Google Assured Workloads in the US; or one of the Government of Canada Cloud Framework Providers.
Tokenization and encryption are must-haves
Tokenization and encryption protect consumer payment credentials from bad actors.
A token obfuscates customers’ credential data and prevents exposure of credit card numbers, CVCs, and expiration dates. But while tokens are standard practice in the payments realm, they are only the first line of defense.
Any data entered on your payment platform should be encrypted both in-flight and at rest using strong encryption keys (AES 256 or as specified by NIST Special Publication 800-131A Revision 1) to prevent it from being scraped by malicious code.
Prevent intrusion — by bots and people
Tokenization and encryption make it difficult for data to be hacked, but identifying and preventing malicious activity through the use of vulnerability scanners and continuous platform monitoring is also critical.
Your vendor should employ both automatic scans (platform monitoring) as well as human intervention (incident review) to ensure complete privacy and security for your customers’ data. Ask for complete documentation of their application security processes, their notification protocols, and understand what they require from you to maximize protection.
Find a partner, not just a vendor
Several vendors can sell you software to manage customer engagement, licensing, and payments. But the most successful programs stem from a deeper partnership between you and your provider.
Win together on shared R3 and conservation goals
If a vendor isn’t asking you about the goals that prompted you to evaluate their solution, consider this a red flag. A good partner will help you think through your objectives, map a solution to achieve them, and collaborate with you to define the metrics you will use to measure outcomes. You will understand the typical timeline for implementation and target outcomes to materialize so you can manage expectations across your agency and with your customers.
Engaging customers with high-quality, relevant messaging brings significant benefits to your agency — and to the hunting and angling community. But changing consumer behavior requires an investment of resources to drive awareness and adoption.
A solid vendor brings those attributes to the table: a powerful CRM, a deep understanding of customer dynamics, and strategies to ensure successful engagement of customers (specific to hunters and anglers) are all green flags for potential vendors.
Continuous feedback and improvement cycle
The best software providers continuously improve their solutions by incorporating user feedback. Find a vendor who proactively seeks feedback and user data from your staff and customers. They should use this data to improve their offerings and to identify areas to collaborate with you to improve your success with their products.
Expertise in public sector and natural resource management
Government agencies — especially natural resource agencies — operate in a unique context, shaped by legislative and regulatory constraints. This results in business processes that may not be readily understood by industry-agnostic vendors. But agency leaders don’t have time to explain all this so that a vendor can adapt.
At a minimum, find a partner with a significant roster of customers and an account team with expertise working with fish and wildlife agencies. Even better, find a vendor that shares a commitment to conservation missions: Does the vendor have hunters and anglers on staff? If so, they’re more likely to know this industry. Heck, they’re using the same software they provide when heading afield.
Check references
The best vendors have customers who will jump at the chance to tell their story. Invest the time to conduct in-depth reference checks — and don’t stop at the references the vendor provides. Leverage your professional network to identify other customers who might be willing to tell you about their experience.
Here are a few questions to include in every reference check:
- What were your motivations for investing in this solution?
- Have you achieved your desired outcomes?
- What are they and how are they measured?
- How long did your last implementation take? Was that faster or slower than expected?
- What resources did you have to bring to the table to get implemented?
- How often do you speak with someone on your account team, and what is the nature of those engagements?
- How often have you engaged with their support team? How quickly did they resolve your issue(s)?
- What do you wish you had known at the time, that you know now about this vendor?
- How much training was required for your staff to achieve proficiency with the solution? How would you rate the quality of the training?
- If payments are part of the solution, are disbursement and settlement reports accurate and easy to understand?
- What does the finance team wish was included in the solution?
- What portion of your payments were conducted online before implementation, and what portion now?
- How does this map to your initial goals?
- Has the vendor provided you with R3 and marketing support? Describe that process.
- How many customer support calls is your office receiving? Is this more or less than your previous vendor?
Start with the end in mind
Consider where your agency is going, not where it is now.
So where do you start? First, focus on the big, end goal, then create a manageable plan that details the smaller steps you’ll take to get there. Success for your organization is likely to include things like R3 and relevancy outcomes, increased revenue to fund agency programs, the opportunity to redeploy resources to other priorities, better customer insights, and improved sustainability. It may also include consolidating many disparate systems into a single solution to improve data sharing, operating efficiency, and simplify vendor management.
Imagine where you’d like to be in the future: What does success look like?
Document the precise problems you’re looking to solve
Examine the technology your agency is currently using and where you have gaps
Plan for a phased launch that delivers value quickly and builds from there
The best vendors will work alongside your agency to serve your community, so your chosen vendor should be able to assist you with the latter part of this process.
Key questions to shape the dialogue of a software deal
Wildlife Resource Management
- Can the licensing system easily adapt to your specific business rules (e.g., controlled hunts and harvest reporting)?
- How easily can data be accessed? Is the data presented in ways that make your work more efficient?
- Can the system be a tool to help you respond to evolving wildlife management challenges like CWD?
Executive Leadership
- Will the system easily adapt to needed changes and advancements in technology?
- Does the technology function in a way that improves the agency?
- Will the solution allow your agency to meet conservation and relevancy goals?
- How will the system improve internal efficiency?
- Does the vendor have ROI examples from other clients?
Law Enforcement
- How often is the data in the solution refreshed?
- Will it reliably work for law enforcement professionals in the field — with and without mobile service?
- Will the system meet all legal requirements of harvest reporting, etc.?
Information Technology
- Does your IT department have any security requirements that need to be met?
- What back office systems do you employ that would require integrations?
- Are there APIs available for any of those systems? Are those APIs open and configurable?
- What data fields are currently being exchanged? Are there any data gaps?
- Are your data systems on-premise or in the cloud? Are they managed internally or by a consultant?
- How are current integrations accessed – VPN, Firewall, etc.?
Security
- Walk us through every element of your security approach.
- Do you meet government-grade infosec requirements?
- What security and compliance certifications do you maintain?
R3 Management and Marketing
- Will the system allow you to engage prospects, tracking them through the system to a license purchase?
- Does the system take full advantage of your agency’s first-party data, and provide the ability to collect zero-party data that will help you provide more personalized engagement?
- Is there a way to access and use customer insights?
- How is marketing list management handled?
- What type (and how many) integrated marketing campaigns are available?
- Are custom campaigns an option?
- Are thorough campaign analytics available?
- Is there knowledgeable staff to support your agency’s efforts?
- Will the solution help you both organize educational classes and monitor resources?
Finance
- How is the finance team handling disbursements from the current vendor?
- Are there multiple disbursements for a given day, or is an entire day’s business processed and settled at once?
- What does their ideal settlement schedule look like?
- Are there certain data fields or reports they need to do their jobs day to day?
Making the case
Work with your internal contacts and preferred vendor to understand the answers to these questions. Your vendor should be able to perform a feasibility study and provide a business case that clearly outlines how departmental needs, including the requirements you uncover during your discovery process, will be addressed.
Things to consider as you’re building the business case:
Make it easy for procurement to help you by being informed on available resources such as cooperative contracts or pre-negotiated IT purchase lists. Your vendor can provide a list of available agreements.
Help your vendor handle objections from other departments. They should focus on how their solution will benefit your agency or department, but understanding requirements from other departments will facilitate better benefit-driven conversations and help your case. From biologists to marketers and law enforcement in between, a unified system to serve everyone is the goal.
