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

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2013 - Radical Innovation from Microsoft with the new Process Based User Interface for Dynamics CRM

Radical Innovation Really?

Yes I know that the words Radical and Innovation are not normally associated with Microsoft.  I've been working as a Microsoft partner for the last 4 years and at Microsoft itself for the 6 years before that and I'd have to say that Microsoft have traditionally made their name as a "Fast Follower" in the IT industry, at least over the last 10 years anyways.  But I would definitely say that at least with this new version of Dynamics CRM the words "Radical" and "Innovation" do apply. 

Radical in that the User Interface with this new product is significantly different from the previous Dynamics CRM User Interface.  Users of the old product will have some challenges in getting used to the new user interface.  Innovative in that in my experience across all the major ERP and CRM products (SAP, Oracle, SF.com, etc.) I have yet to see a User Interface quite like this one.

The New Process Based User Interface

Traditional CRM and ERP application require users to navigate to various screens to do various activities and tasks.  For example you might navigate to the Account to update some customer information then open up an Order screen to enter in an Order against that customer then decided to create an Appointment to meet with the customer to get the Order signed and then go back to the Order screen to process or close the Order. 

Invariably then users were navigating to several different screens and were left searching for information.  If they were lucky they had an application that was fully integrated with Outlook and other tools to avoid rekeying.  In some cases the information from several areas of the application might be combined together into one screen to make it easier to enter in the data.  But that assumed one standard process. 

With the new Process Based User Interface for Dynamics CRM, users can configure the application around their business processes not the other way around.  You can now have multiple different processes for multiple different business scenarios and you don't have to navigate around to various screens to complete a process.  In our previous example instead of navigating around to 4 different screens you can sit in one screen and the application brings the data relevant to that particular step in that particular process to you for each step in the process.  You don't have to go look for things.  The system serves it up to you.  If the process you use to sell one particular product is slightly different than the process you use for another product then you can configure those different processes in the system and switch between them depending the product you are selling.  The system changes to match your process.  You don't change your business processes to match the system. 

What are the benefits then of this new User Interface...

1. The application more closely replicates how you do business;
2. It will be easier to train users on the system;
3. It becomes easier for new employees to learn your business processes and you need less knowledge to navigate your business;
4. You can more easily enforce process compliance;
5. Few clicks, fewer screens to navigate to and a generally better user experience;
6. Less time searching for information; and
7. Easier to use from a mobility perspective as everything is brought to the one screen when you need it.  

Business Rules Engine - Power in the Business Analysts hands

In addition to the new Process Based User Interface, Microsoft had extended the tools that people can use to build business rules into their CRM Application.  With the new Business Rules Engine, Business Analysts with a relatively moderate IT skill set can configure how the application responds to users.  Making a field required to be entered is just a few clicks.  Having a whole section of a form to appear or disappear based on the answer to a specific question is just a few clicks.  Giving the user feedback when they've entered in an incorrect value and giving the guidance on how to enter in the correct value just a few clicks. 

Combine this with the new Process Based User Interface and you can have different business processes and different business rules for each process configured into your business application thus more closely matching how you do business.  Again all this is accessible by the user from just one screen for each business process. 

 

 

Microsoft Embraces Mobility

Along with the new Process Based UI and the new Business Rules Engine that Microsoft has released with Dynamics CRM 2013, Microsoft are also in the process of releasing newly reengineered mobility clients for iPad, Windows Tablet, Android and iPhone.

All three of these innovations (Mobility, Process Based UI and the new Business Rules Engine) are complimentary.  User can now sit are the mobility device of their choice and have all the information brought to them in on screen that they need to perform their job function.  All of this is presented in a Mobility User Interface that is optimised for touch and easy to use. 

 

 

How will the Market react?

I've demonstrated this new UI personally to a number of customers and prospects since the product was released earlier this month.  Existing eSavvy Customers were also treated to a sneak pre-view of the new UI during the last eSavvy Dynamics CRM User Group meeting.  The feedback from customers and prospects has been overwhelmingly positive.  Users appreciate how much the application can now adapt to how they want to use it and how easy it will be for them to use. 

The only challenge I see is getting users used to this new way of thinking.  People who have been constrained by the classical layout that business applications have had over the last 20 years will need to break down that paradigm and raise their expectations in terms of how business applications will meet their needs.  It's a challenge though that I'm sure people will be happy to rise to. 


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.

A Better Way to Deliver CRM Projects

What you Want vs. What you get Delivered

Having delivered hundreds of Dynamics CRM projects and before that hundreds of CRM and ERP projects using software from a number of other vendors (Oracle, SAP, PeopleSoft, etc.) I've seen what works and what doesn't work.  If the definition of success is giving the customer what they want in terms of scope and being on time and in budget then an even simpler definition of the success is giving the customer what they expect.  So a lot of the successful projects I've seen resulted from the project manager putting processes and procedures in place to make sure there were no surprises and the customer largely got what they expected. 

Most project management professionals will adopt one of one of either two common methods to deliver a project in the effort to give the customer what they want.  These are the Waterfall Approach and the Agile Approach. 

The Waterfall Approach adopts the classic Design, Build, Test, Deploy scenario where the design of the solution has to be fully characterised before build starts and the build has to be fully completed before the testing starts. 

In the Agile approach the idea is to break up the project into small chunks with no formal design phase but rather a set of requirements know as the "Solution Backlog" that the development team works from.  The build is broken up into a number of individual sprint cycles where some requirements form the Solution Backlog are explored,  a component of the solution is built and then given back to the users for testing.  Subsequently more requirements are explored, more building is done, more testing is done and then the cycle is repeated.  Typically the "Sprints" are done daily.

Pro's and Con's of the Waterfall Approach to Project Management

One of the primary benefits of the Waterfall approach amongst other things is that it attempts to characterise the entire solution requirements and design in detail completely before the build is started.  In so doing the customer can be presented an estimate of the total costs and a plan in terms of how the solution would be delivered.  There is also an attempt to discover and address the interactions between the various components of the solution design and the impacts of various processes on one another.  Assuming the consultancy or internal project team has done a decent job of the design and those costs, resource plans and project plans will be relatively accurate. 

The primary disadvantage of the Waterfall Approach is that the customer is expected to be able to characterise all the requirements up front with a reasonable degree of certainty.  From practical experience it is highly probable that once they start to test and use the solution the customer will end up reprioritising those previously listed requirements (what previously was important is now less important and that which wasn't that important is now more so) and coming up with new ones as they understand better the capabilities of the tools they are using.  Scope ends up changing and the previously advertised costs and time frames also change.

Pro's and Con's of the Agile Approach to Project Management

With the Agile Approach you are constantly going back to the customer getting their inputs in terms of the design and how the solution is being built.  The customer learns more quickly how the solution would work and they are able to incorporate those learning's into how the system is built.  They then naturally end up with something which is closer to what they want. 

The primary disadvantage with the Agile approach is that the customer doesn't have a clear view up front as to the costs or time frames of the deployment.  The build of the solution can take off in a direction totally unintended when the system was initially scoped.  Also there is a high probably that there will be a lot of rework because a global solution design was not done and with an integrated complex system items changed in one area have impacts in others with unintended results which leads to higher development costs. 

Because of these inherent pro's and con's of both the Waterfall and Agile approaches it would be fair to say that Waterfall is much more common when external consultants are being used, when the solution is some form of COTS (Commercial of the Shelf Solution) that is being configured and customized and the customer insists on having a clear view of costs up front.  Agile on the other hand is more common when the project is being completed primarily by internal client resources and the solution is a more of a pure development project using one or a number of development languages. 

The Best of Both Worlds - The Hybrid Project Management Approach

So what I am about to recommend is a third option which we've used many times with a number of our customers in doings Dynamics CRM Deployments.  I call it the "Hybrid Approach".  The Hybrid Approach attempts to pull the best from both worlds both Waterfall and Agile.  From the Waterfall Approach we do adopt doing a Global Solution Design and formal User Acceptance Testing with a Structured Build Cycle.  Taking best practices from the Agile Approach we adopt several techniques to gather the clients input during the build cycle and we break the build cycle into more descrete chunks thereby ensuring their are more input signals coming from the customer to the development team.

Key Components of the Hybrid Approach

The following are the key components of the Hybrid Approach...

1. We still have formal Design, Build, User Acceptance Testing and Deployment Phases; however
2. We break the Design Phase down into a several rounds.  First we conduct a Diagnostic which takes a high level pass at requirements gathering and design in an effort to validate costs and scope.  We then do a more detailed round of Design as part of the project proper.  By this time we have a clearer view of what we are designing from the Diagnostic before we start the process;
3. By conducting a Global Solution Design we attempt to reduce the amount of rebuild that occurs because of the interactions between the various modules in the system;
4. We break the build cycle into a number of releases with Solution Testing in-between each release.  We don't let the development team go for more than 3 to 4 weeks before have a full round of solution test to validate what they are building.  In this way gaps in the design are identified earlier in the build process;
5. We do regular Solution Pre-views with the client where weekly or bi-weekly the develop teams present back to the customers what they have been building to gather inputs and validate the correctness of the previously completed design phase;  and
6. We adopt a Phased Approach to Delivery.  Rather than doing the project in a "Big Bang" fashion we deliver the functionality into production in smaller buckets or phases such that we can get feedback of how the system will actually operation in production.  Each Phase will have several Build Releases. 

In essence we attempt to get the benefits of both Waterfall and Agile which are ...

• A clearer view of the costs, time frames and scope up front;
• Less chance of re-development because of Architectural Issues because we have thought through those global design issues up front; and
• A higher chance that the customer will get what they want because gaps in the Solution Design are identified earlier in the cycle through Solution Previews, short Release Cycles and multiple Deployment Phases. 

If you want more information about the Hybrid Approach you can contact me at dgoad@esavvy.com.au or alternatively you can send an email to info@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.

Microsoft's Latest Release of Dynamics CRM Online - The Last Chink in the Armour Filled

I've been selling Microsoft Dynamics CRM for a long time.  There were always value points for Microsoft Dynamics CRM over the competition such as the Microsoft Outlook Integration, the Price and the ability to customize the solution in a easy and quick way (often referred to as Extended CRM or xRM) but there were also weak points in the Dynamics CRM solution that the competition would pick on as well. 

Microsoft filled a lot of those weak points when they first released Dynamics CRM Online some two years back but there were two things that still came up again and again.  Clearly the competition was trying to take advantage of Dynamics CRM's weak points.  These were...

1. Cross Browser Support (including Support for iPad); and
2. Providing a Simplified User Interface.

... neither of which Dynamics CRM was good at.  Well in the latest release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM both of those problems have been "largely" solved. 

Dynamics CRM Cross Browser Support

The problem with a lot of customers was that they had already made investments in non-Microsoft technologies such as iPad and Android Tablets.  They weren't willing to give up on those investments and it took a while for Microsoft to realise that the Desktop and Laptop were tools of the past and the Tablet was the tool of the future and that for the time being Microsoft was not the dominant player in the Tablet.  Well with the latest release of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Microsoft have corrected that oversight.  Below is a list of the browsers and platforms that Microsoft Dynamics CRM now supports.  So if you are an avid Apple Desktop or iPad user your investments in those tools can be maintained and you can have Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online too!

 

 

 

With the Multi-Browser Support Microsoft has also provided a limited iPad Client a screen shot of which is shown here...

 

 



 

Providing a Simplified User Interface

When doing demo's of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online often customers would complain that Dynamics CRM looked too complex and they liked the simplified user interface of the competition.  As a sales person we would go to great lengths to configure CRM simplify the UI to counteract that conclusion.   Well with the latest release of CRM Online Microsoft have started moving to a simpler "Process Based User Interface".   The idea is that the UI changes depend on what stage you are at in terms of your business process and that the business process is built into the system. That same business process is largely user configurable to your own specific needs.   An example of the new User Interface is show here...

 

 

So now when I walk into customers I can tell them that the solution works across all platforms and is simple to use.  Two additional value points which most of my customer appreciate.  Add to this the lower price than the competition and the traditional strength of the CRM to Outlook Integration and really you have an unbeatable combination. 

Now when customers ask me how I position CRM against the competition I simply say " we can do everything they can do... but just cheaper."    This is a story that all my customers understand and appreciate.

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.