Federal Government Agency
CRM Software for Tracking Partnership Activities

Business Challenge

A Federal Government Agency required a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution to coordinate and track its partnership activities with outside organizations. These organizations ranged from state/local governments and community-based associations to businesses and non-profits. They needed a solution capable of recording, tracking and managing partner contacts and activities back to their geographically spread staff.

The Solution

“Initial rollout was achieved within 12 weeks to meet an aggressive go-live date…”

“Due to the success of the course, the team’s role was extended to provide on-going training”

The Agency selected Salesforce.com as the platform and Acumen Solutions as the implementer. Acumen Solutions built a 2,200 license application and has continued to be engaged in project management, enhancements, training and help desk support.

Initial rollout was achieved within 12 weeks to meet an aggressive go-live date required for the system to be functional for the first wave of employees hired. During this phase, Acumen Solutions’ consultants proved the benefits of using a cloud-based solution by importing over 120,000 partner organizations and associated history from a homegrown Oracle Database and several other external sources.

With over 200,000 contacts, the Agency needed an error free mechanism to quickly broadcast targeted messages based on criteria in the database. Acumen Solutions managed communication with partner organizations by including email templates, automated reminders about lapsed tasks, neglected accounts, and calendar events.
They also created customized summary and detail reports to share with Congress in its oversight role which would help them measure success of the program.

In addition, the Acumen Solutions team developed a training curriculum which they delivered on-site at Agency headquarters and its regional offices. Due to the success of the course, the team’s role was extended to provide on-going training delivered on-site or via live or pre-recorded WebEx.

The help desk feature included trouble tickets, product enhancement requests and training requests which were logged on-line by users or by calling the Acumen Solutions’ telephone line. Solutions to the most frequent problems; whether policy or technology related, were published to a knowledge base accessible to administrators and supervisors of the system.

Return on Investment

The Agency successfully managed over 150,000 partner organizations and 200,000 contacts within their Salesforce.com application. There were more than 20,000 transactions recorded a day to capture services provided by the Agency and their partners, including document exchange, and event and calendar tracking. Data storage provided users with marketing content that could be distributed on-demand via Salesforce.com’s mass email solution.

 

PDFFederal Government Agency: CRM Software for Tracking Partnership Activities (PDF)