I often get this question from people “What is CRM? What does it really do?” It is a tough question to answer. It is easy to say that it can help sales and marketing. But when I look at our , it is so much more than just a sales and marketing application. I thought I would highlight a couple of ways we are seeing being used in state and local government. When you think about Government, you don’t think about sales and marketing, you think about providing services, responding to issues, taking applications, managing cases, etc. Well, the Public Sector is using Microsoft Dynamics CRM for all of those things.
Think about managing applications for medical assistance. In some agencies, this is an extremely paper based process. Applications are filled out by hand and routed to people for review and approval. This takes time and people. Government is looking for ways to do more with less. One way is to develop more efficient processes that remove paper from the process. This is how CRM is being leveraged by agencies. In CRM you have households (accounts), patients (contacts), applications (opportunities), etc. You have processes for application review and integration with back office applications. like role based forms, configurable forms, custom entities, workflows and dialogs allow agencies to quickly build application and case management software at a fraction of the cost of traditional development.
Another example is constituent management in cities. Cities need to take, manage and respond to a variety of calls from residents. Everything from barking dogs, nuisance properties, potholes, etc. needs to be accounted for and routed to the appropriate person or department for a resolution. The ability to track incoming requests from residents allows a city to be more responsive and over time better understand what the needs of residents are over time. Once again, municipal budgets are stretched and having people available to take calls and route them appropriately for follow-up may not be an option. Using technology can help cities respond to citizen issues in a timely fashion, even while budgets are being impacted.
So again, what is CRM? An application? A platform? A process management function? A development tool? Yes, it can be all of that.
By: Michael Nafziger, RSM -
Do you know of any County agencies using Microsoft Dynamics CRM as a Court Case Management System?