Portals in Public Sector: the next Evolution...

Challenges in Public Sector IT

So both the Federal and State Public Sectors in Australia are struggling at the moment with deficits.  All are warning of further funding cutbacks.  Many are looking for ways to trim costs from the public sector operational budgets in order to fund pet projects.  In the light of this, self service methods for Citizens to get access to government services to reduce costs are becoming more popular than ever. 

Remember the last time you went into a bank?  Probably not.  Most people do all their banking over the internet.  Firstly it allows you access to the services at a time that suits you.  Secondly there is no waiting in line or on the phone.  You get access to what you want now and don't have to wait. Self Service Portals are interesting then in that they allow you to reduce costs (because you need fewer people on the end of the phone to receive the call) but yet they increase the perception of the quality of the services you are giving to customer or in the case of Gov't the citizen. 

Therefore self service options are now all the rage with most government agencies.  It's taken a little while for the government to catch up with where the banks and financial institutions have been at but they are definitely there now.

Portals in the Past Tense vs. Portals 2.0

In addition to the concept of a Self Service Portal becoming more popular I think the average government thinking in terms of what providing a self service portal means has changed.  Previously the focus for the portal was the portal experience itself with perhaps some integration to backend systems. 

What we are finding now is that government departments are realising it is not just about the self service portal itself but about developing the business processes around it and making them more efficient as well.  To facilitate those business processes you need tools for that as well as for managing the portal content itself which often has to be dynamic allowing for changes in programs and the development of new services. 

Queues plus workflows plus communication managements tools all are needed to manage the inevitable issues, questions and complaints that come from portals which have to support high transaction volumes of citizen requests are key components.  An integrated Knowledge Base that can be exposed to the citizens using the portal also helps.  It is not just about the portal and how it looks and feels but the backend tools that supports the portal processes and active management of Dynamics content.  This is where a CRM system comes into play.   Instead of looking for just a Portal most government IT organizations are now looking for integrated Portal and CRM tools to manage the portal, the content and the process.  This is where Dynamics CRM plus ADX Studio as a solution on top of Dynamics CRM can provide an elegant solution.

The Advantages of a Dynamics CRM/ ADX Studio Based Solution

ADX Studio is a solution built on top of Dynamics CRM which turns Dynamics CRM into a Content Management system for a Government Portal.  A completely configurable solutions it comes with a series of pre-built portals including a Government Portal and a Self Service Community Portal.  All use Dynamics CRM as both the portal database as well as the Content Management Tool.   Fully integrated, prebuilt, configurable and with the option to go cloud based or on-premise, Dynamics CRM with a combination of ADX Studio provides an attractive solution for most government departments who want to get a self service portal up and running quickly and want a set up tools not just to support the portal but to support all business processes that go around setting up a successful self service portal.

The ADX Studio solution with Dynamics CRM has won the 2012 US State and Local Gov't Rising Star Award recently for the solution in the Government space. 

Cloud Based or On-Premise... Decisions Decisions...

So the interesting thing about Dynamics CRM is that you have the option of either going with Public Cloud, Private Cloud or On-Premise.  Watching the active discussions that are going on in Government today around the concept of Public Cloud it is interesting to see the different views.  The Australian Federal Public Sector seems to be very anti-public cloud with AGIMO coming out categorically against the concept of Public Cloud for Public Sector.  On the other hand the NSW Government has made recent announcements stating their favourable view of Public Cloud based IT solutions. 

At the end of the day however Microsoft supports both.  Dynamics CRM can be hosted On-Premise, Private Cloud through Partner or through secure Public Cloud through Microsoft.   All options are there and because the code base for Dynamics CRM On-premise is essentially the same as online that means that you can fairly easily move back and forth between each option. 

All this for Less than the price of a Cup of Coffee per day?

So the Professional version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is priced at relatively cost effectively at ~$65 per user per month.  However Microsoft provides for various license levels and for most Call Centre users of a Dynamics CRM Online system the lower cost "Basic" License applies.  Priced at ~ $30 per user per month this is extremely cost effective for most Gov't departments and can often be handled as a OpEx expense rather than a CapEx expense requiring more formal approvals.  Work this out and this amounts to less than $1.50 per day per user or less than the cup of coffee you buy down at your local coffee shop.  If you want more details around Dynamics CRM Online software pricing just click on  Dynamics CRM Online Quick Reference Guide .

In terms of the Portal tool ADX Studio Tool that works on top of Dynamics CRM the pricing can be found here:  http://www.adxstudio.com/adxstudio-xrm/xrm-licensing  .  For most uses the cost will be a once of $9,995 USD. 

Neither Dynamics CRM nor ADX studio charge for the number of external users (i.e. Citizens) that are accessing the portal from outside of your organization.  These are all free. 

Now there will likely be some services costs associated with the deployment and those costs may vary with the level of backend integration you want with other systems in your business.  But based on practical experience a simple system as a first step can be up and running typically within 2 to 3 months.  So for most Public Sector IT Groups to get a basic system in place the services costs will be relatively low.

For more information you can send me an email at dgoad@esavvy.com.au


David Goad is the Managing Director for eSavvy – Microsoft Dynamics CRM Gold Certified Partner. eSavvy is an award winning Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner staffed by some of the most experienced solution and technical architects in the Microsoft partner channel. We build and deliver relationship management solutions based on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform for large enterprises as well small and midsize businesses in Australia

How to Improve Human Resources Call Centre Management

The Challenges that HR Practitioners  Face in Large Organizations

There are many challenges that HR Practitioners face in large organisations but some of the more common ones involve...

1) How to give consistent advise - with employees that will shop around to get the answer they want to hear.  But even when they employees don't do that with so many access points to a typical HR Department and so many people in that department it is near impossible to ensure that exactly the same advice is given in the exact same circumstance by two different people on your team.

2) How to be Proactive - HR Practitioners are often left reacting to issues that go on in the business and scrambling to catch-up.  Issues around discrimination, employee dissatisfaction with their line management team, and lack of understanding around policies and procedures are often dealt with reactively as opposed to proactively. 

3) How to be more Efficient - It's a tough economy out there.  Everyone is cutting back and HR departments are expected to do their part in terms of cutting costs.  This often means handling more issues with fewer people.  How will you cope with this?

How a Dynamics CRM System can help...

Speaking from practical experience there are a number of ways that a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system can help an HR department and specifically how Dynamics CRM can help.  Most HR departments when they invest in technology think of HR Payroll tools and HR Management Systems but not much else.   They rarely think of their employees as their customers and therefore don't think that CRM systems can help them.  But the reality is that CRM systems specialize in managing "People Interaction" and if you are an HR Department Good People Interaction Management is key to your success. 

Specifically here's some ways how a Dynamics CRM based system can help...

1) Full Communications Management - Dynamics CRM allows you to manage all your communications such as email, phone, meetings and letters.  Everything can be tracked and the entire history of communication with an employee since they started with and organization can be seen.

2) Integration with Outlook - Because Dynamics CRM is fully integration with Outlook and most organisations still use Outlook at their email tool this means that everything can be tracked with a single click.  There is no double handling copying emails over to your HR tool or recording appointments and the outcomes thereof in both your calendar and your HR tool.  Double handling is eliminated.

3) Integrated Knowledge Base - There is a fully integrated knowledge base that is easy to search and allows your HR Business Partners with a few clicks to insert the knowledge base article into an email.  This means it is easy to process common employee questions quickly and effortlessly.

4) Complete Activity History through Audit Logging - One of the most important things with employee communication is to keep detailed records.  These can be admissible in the court of law or in labour disputes.  Dynamics CRM keeps a full audit trail of interactions with an employee and keeps track of all changes in the system.  So you can see when a change to an employees record was made and by whom?

5) Advice Self Service  -   The Knowledge Base in Dynamics can be integrated easily to a self service portal.  This means that policies loaded into CRM for your HR Advisors to use can also be made available for employees to easily look for themselves.  Dynamics CRM becomes your one source for all your HR Policies.

6) Proactive Reporting to Identify Trends and Problems - One of the challenges for HR Departments is to see a problem is coming and proactively deal with it before it becomes more serious.   For example identifying a supervisor who gets a lot of complaints or realising that a particular piece of HR policy is generating a lot of questions and needs to be better communicated.  With a full dash boarding and reporting capability, HR business partners can build reports themselves easily to identify trends and emerging problem areas.

7) Proactive Outbound Communication - Once you've identified a particular issue you can use Dynamics CRM to communicate out to your employees in a proactive and consistent way.  You can also track who has read your communications and who hasn't.

8) Standardize Responses - Email templates to standardise responses can be built in Dynamics CRM and used either through Outlook on an Ad Hoc basis or automatically through system generated emails. 

9) Case Management, Queues and Workflows - Depending on the type of question or issues raised by the employee or determined by the department they come from the question or complaint can automatically be routed to the group or person within your HR team best suited to answer the question.  The issues is tracked as a Case and the history of the case is management.  This means that employees are not being bounced around from person to person looking for the relevant expert in your group, communications is more efficient and the employee is responded to more quickly than before. 

10) Business Processes Built right into your System - with the new Business Process Based User Interface the CRM system can be designed specifically around your HR Departments specific business processes. 

In the end then a Dynamics CRM System can help you give consistent advice, be more proactive and do more with less by becoming more efficient in your people management. 

 

Less Cost than a cup of coffee per day, really?

So the Professional version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online is priced at relatively cost effectively at ~$65 per user per month.  However Microsoft provides for various license levels and for most HR users of a Dynamics CRM Online system the lower cost "Basic" License applies.  Priced at ~ $30 per user per month this is extremely cost effective for most HR departments and can often be handled as a OpEx expense rather than a CapEx expense requiring more formal approvals.  Work this out and this amounts to less than $1.50 per day per user or less than the cup of coffee you buy down at your local coffee shop.  If you want more details around Dynamics CRM Online software pricing just click on  Dynamics CRM Online Quick Reference Guide .

Now there will likely be some services costs associated with the deployment and those costs may vary with the level of backend integration you want with other systems in your business.  But based on practical experience a simple system as a first step can be up and running typically within 6 to 8 weeks.  So for most HR Departments to get a basic system in place the services costs will be relatively low.

A Practical Example:  How the NSW Gov't does it...

One of eSavvy's oldest customers is NSW Health, specifically the Hunter New England Region.  They came up on one of the earlier versions of Dynamics CRM and have since upgraded.  But their HR Department are using Dynamics CRM as described in this article with some significant business benefits being realised.  For more information click here:  NSW Health Customer Case Study  or alternatively you can send me an email at dgoad@esavvy.com.au


David Goad is the Managing Director for eSavvy – Microsoft Dynamics CRM Gold Certified Partner. eSavvy is an award winning Microsoft Dynamics CRM Partner staffed by some of the most experienced solution and technical architects in the Microsoft partner channel. We build and deliver relationship management solutions based on the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform for large enterprises as well small and midsize businesses in Australia