Department of Commerce Refers Businesses to Government Assistance ProgramsBusiness ChallengePresident Obama presented the Department of Commerce with a challenging, yet exciting task when he asked Secretary Locke to make businesses more competitive and to create more American jobs by bringing all of the Department of Commerce’s services together under one roof. The primary purpose of this new initiative, termed CommerceConnect, is to provide a “one-stop-shop” for businesses to quickly gain access to more than 60 Federal programs, spread across multiple Federal agencies that provide businesses with technical assistance, capital, intellectual property protection, grants, and business information. This undertaking required the Department of Commerce to create a centralized location to store current information on many programs and to support multiple channels of inquiries. This CRM System also needed to facilitate collaboration among the geographically distributed CommerceConnect team and required new standard business processes and procedures to be established to support the new program. CommerceConnect needed a CRM system that was simple, yet comprehensive in order to expedite the ability to start helping businesses which only allowed a short period of time for system design, configuration and user training. SolutionThe Department of Commerce selected Acumen Solutions to implement the case management tool on the Salesforce.com cloud computing platform due to Acumen Solution’s extensive customer portfolio in the CRM solution space and track record of successes with cloud computing. Acumen Solutions delivered an initial system within thirty days to meet CommerceConnect’s aggressive launch timeline. Through two iterations, Acumen Solutions worked with The Department of Commerce to:
With this solution, CommerceConnect Call Centers are able to utilize Salesforce.com to process customer inquiries, quickly creating and assigning cases to an appropriate CommercceConnect case manager. Case Managers are able to track their consultation with businesses, search for applicable Federal programs and create proposals directly within the CRM system. Based on a firm’s business needs, Case Managers may refer a business to government agencies or programs to assist their needs. As the CommerceConnect program grows, Acumen Solutions will be instrumental in developing the vision and strategy to train over 15 CommerceConnect offices which will open between 2010 and 2011. Training is critical to effectively familiarize new employees with the program as well as to provide refresher training to ensure user adoption and consistent quality service. Acumen Solutions will also be providing ongoing Help Desk Support to answer policy related questions for the CommerceConnect team as well as provide technical assistance and system maintenance. With future enhancements, Acumen Solutions will also develop and deliver a web-based Customer Self Service Portal to interactively guide businesses to recommended programs and services based on input parameters. The Self Service Portal will allow CommerceConnect to increase the volume of businesses initiative can assist on an annual basis. Using Salesforce.com guided navigation technology -- Visual Process Manager, the Customer Self Service Portal will allow the team to develop and maintain decision trees without a single line of code. TechnologiesAcumen Solutions selected the Salesforce.com CRM cloud computing platform to deliver core contact center capabilities, including case management and call center management, with real time reporting and dashboards. The third party applications that Acumen has integrated include:
Acumen also plans to integrate the following third party applications in future iterations:
Return on InvestmentThe Department of Commerce’s CommerceConnect program now has an integrated CRM system to support call center and case manager operations. The technology and business process consulting provided by Acumen Solutions helped open communication lines between the government agencies and standardize contact information that needed to be collected from customers. This project was essential to a successful launch of the CommerceConnect program in less than thirty days. This project also allowed CommerceConnect to continuously monitor and report their return on investment by recording the number of cases handled by CommerceConnect and providing insight into the most effective advertising channels to reach the business community. For the first time, CommerceConnnect has a tool to identify the popularity and effectiveness of Government programs aimed at assisting American businesses and can use this CRM system to identify obsolete or ineffective programs. This solution was essential to the CommerceConnect team achieving their goal of connecting American businesses to government agencies and programs in this challenging economic time and the CRM system promises to provide the type of feedback data to allow the Department of Commerce to fine tune Federal programs. |
Practice Highlights A leading global management consulting firm challenged Acumen Solutions to deploy a videoconferencing solution that delivers significant ROI, saves time and money, increases productivity, and reduces their carbon footprint. We delivered!  Acumen Solutions made a significant difference to how Sun manages their customer interactions by developing an Executive Briefing Center portal. This tool has become invaluable for field sales, executive presenters, and briefing center staff.  A major cable provider wanted to put a greater focus on their customers’ experience. Using Salesforce.com, we delivered a solution that not only improved call resolution and handling times but also reduced unnecessary truck rolls and increased sales. With Acumen Solutions implementation CommerceConnect was able to help U.S. businesses connect with government agencies for aid and become more successful in the global market.  Acumen solutions helped one of the largest insurance and financial services holding companies in the UK automate their claims and audit process so they could make strategic business decisions in minutes instead of days.
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