Customer Solution Case Study
/ Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Speeds Application Development with CRM Platform
Overview
Country or Region:United States
Industry: Government agencies by level—Local government agencies
Customer Profile
Los AngelesCounty is one of the largest local governments in the United States, providing services for roughly 12 million residents and employing more than 100,000 people.
Business Situation
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Information Resource Management team needed a more agile platform for the constituent issue-tracking applications that the five county board offices used.
Solution
The Information Resource Management team worked with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner InfoStrat to use Microsoft Dynamics CRM for constituent issue–tracking and a growing number of other business applications.
Benefits
- More agile IT department
- Improved citizen service
- More efficient operations
John Wei, Chief Information Officer, Executive Office of the Los Angeles
County Board of Supervisors
Governing the largest county government in the United States, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors ran constituent issue–tracking applications for the five board offices on a legacy application platform. A couple of years ago, the Los Angeles County CIO’s office recommended that county departments move legacy applications to Microsoft Dynamics CRM because of its integration with Microsoft Office applications and technical flexibility. The Board of Supervisors Information Resource Management department began working with the solution and, in a little over two years, has implemented unique constituentissue–tracking applications for four of five board offices. In addition, the team has built at least four other business applications for divisions within the Board of Supervisor’s Executive Office, streamlining operations and better securing sensitive data.
Situation
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors is the governing body responsible for public safety, property and municipal services, family and social services, and health services for roughly 12 million residents. All of the 88 cities in Los Angeles County contract with the county to provide municipal services. The county also provides some services for all residents, such as public social services, property assessments, and vital records.
Each of the five districts of the county elects its own representative to the Board of Supervisors to four-year terms. The supervisors run their own offices but rely on the Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors for IT application development and support. With budgetary pressures and growing constituent needs, the Los Angeles County Board of SupervisorsInformation Resource Management group under the Executive Office continually seeks ways to use technology to reduce the costs and increase the effectiveness of operations.
“For nearly 15 years, our office has maintained constituent issue–tracking applications for each of the five board districts in the county,” says Julie Zalace, Chief of Computing Operations for the Executive Office. “We used an older application platform to create customized applications for each district. But, over time, it became increasingly difficult to modify the applications. We ran into technical limitations and fell far behind in terms of updating the software. Consequently, board offices resorted to using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets, Microsoft Access databases, and paper-based processes to track information.”
To modify the legacy constituent-tracking applications, Zalace needed to gather formal business requirements and contract with an outside software development firm through the county’s procurement process. This costly and time-consuming endeavor left John Wei,CIO of the Executive Office of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors,looking for an alternative.
“We had definitely reached the limits of what that technology could do and needed to move to a more modern customer relationship management package that would be easier to modify and maintain,” says Wei.
Solution
The Los Angeles County Chief Information Office, led by Richard Sanchez, had recently completed a review of available customer relationship management products; their recommendation to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Information Resource Management team was MicrosoftDynamics CRM.
“One of the requirements that came back from all the offices was that the solution had to work well with Microsoft Office,” says Wei. “Based on everything that staff in the board offices told us they needed, we agreed that Microsoft Dynamics CRM would be the best fit.”
The Information Resource Management team contracted with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner InfoStrat to train and advise them on how to best make use of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, including using the system architecture as a foundation for other business applications.
“We didn’t want to arrive at an unscalable architecture, especially since we could tell how well this product was going to fit our business needs,” says Ki Kim, Architect and Manager of Computing Operations. The constituent-tracking applications enable district offices to log calls from constituents and then track the progress made on those cases with relevant county departments. However, each district office has unique requirements that the team needed to accommodate by using Microsoft Dynamics CRM.
Integration with Microsoft Office
The district offices take advantage of the way that Microsoft Dynamics CRM ties into Microsoft Office applications to increase the speed and consistency of their responses to citizens. Because each office has an official-contact email address, employees can launch cases directly from citizen requests that come in through email. Employees can also use Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Word templates that are automatically populated with relevant content from Microsoft Dynamics CRM when writing official correspondence.
Workflow and Role-Based Security
The district offices use workflow technology in Microsoft Dynamics CRM to stay on top of highly sensitive issues and track time-sensitive issues in realtime.
“It’s absolutely critical for the district office to keep track of what is going on with these cases,” explains Zalace. “District supervisors take it on themselves to follow up on these cases and the system helps them in that capacity. When a case is initiated, district deputies and relevant staff are automatically notified and tasks are assigned. The supervisors can run a real-time report at any time to see the status of these cases. And, by using the role-based security settings in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, we can restrict access to sensitive cases to only those employees who need it.”
Project Tracking and Modifications
For structural modifications, the district offices turn to the Information Resource Management team. However, each district office has at least two “super users” who are trained to make changes to fields, forms, and drop-down menus.
“Our approach is to train the district offices to own the content of the applications, while we provide expertise on the structural aspects of the applications,” says Zalace. “This works most of the time, and the district offices are always learning and becoming more proficient at making the most of their solutions.”
Platform for New Applications
However, the manner in which the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors uses Microsoft Dynamics CRM is hardly limited to constituent tracking. “Our first projects were our constituent-tracking applications,” says Rony Wirtz, Application Development Manager at the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. “But, as the application development team became more familiar with the features available in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, we realized that the solution could be customized to accommodate many other application requests that we had in the queue.”
The Information Resource Management group uses the application development framework in Microsoft Dynamics CRM to quickly develop and deploy new business applications for the Board of Supervisors Executive Office. The development team takes advantage of core features in the solution, such as workflow, notifications and alerts, and role-based access to information and functionality, to create applications that fit varying requirements.
Working with the development framework in Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the Information Resource Management team has created several mission-critical business applications that streamline operations for the county, including:
- Human Resources Personnel Action Requests. This application automates much of the approval workflow required for hiring new employees, transferring employees between departments, and promoting employees. “Previously, these processes involved walking around with a paper form to different desks, and sometimes, these papers would get lost,” says Wirtz. “Now, it’s completely online and automated; managers fill out an online form and people can see where the process is at any time.”
- County Service Awards. With the county employing more than 100,000 people, managing the service awards for 5, 10, 20, and 30 years of service used to require considerable time and effort. The Information Resource Management team built an application based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM to track who gets these awards and the award inventory. The application integrates with the county’s employment database.
- Board Letter Submittal System (BLS).This new electronic board letter systemstreamlines the process for the entire county to electronically submit departmental board letters to be placed on the weekly board agenda. “Because this new system had no predecessor, the past human process was to submit a board letter and then require departments to make 22 paper copies of the request along with supporting documents and deliver them manually,” explains Sachi Hamai, Executive Officer of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. Each board letter was physically numbered according to its agenda item and then all 22 copies had to be sorted and stacked with the other board letters.” This project started with an initial pilot of eight county departments working out the needed workflows and approval process to include the Chief Executive Office, Board of Supervisors, County Counsel, Internal Services Division, Auditor Controller, Public Works, and Parks & Recreation. BLS was rolled out to the remaining 31 county departments within the year and won the Los Angeles County STARS! Award for October 2010.
- Assessment Appeals Board (AAB). The legacy AAB system used for the property tax assessment process reached its peak a few years ago. The average property tax appeals filed in the recent years were approximately 9,000 applications between 2003 and 2008, but between 2009 and 2010, the appeals jumped to an average of 42,000 per year. This trend burdened the already-known inefficiencies of the system; it also created a bottleneck for taxpayers who seek timely customer service for their appeals.
In early 2010, the Information Resource Management team started developing a new AAB system by using Microsoft Dynamics CRM. This system includes electronic filing of property tax appeals so that the existing manual process can be streamlined to provide quality customer service and cost savings of manual data entry for applications. The new AAB system went live in September of 2010 with preliminary numbers showing about 40 percent of the appeals were filed online with minimal backlogs for data entry.The AAB application won the Los Angeles County STARS! Award for April 2011.
- Conflict of Interest (COI) – Form 700. Prior to the new electronic system, the Statement of Interest filing officer used a paper-based system to store and keep track of public officials that are required to fileCOI statements (Form700). Working with the business unit, the Information Resource Management team used Microsoft Dynamics CRM to develop a COI system that includes Internet-accessible electronic filings of Form700 and an administrative management application in the backend. The result of this application alleviated inefficient and expensive procedures, paper storage costs, errors in completing the paper forms, and laborious paper processing by the filing officer’s staff.
- Customer Service Center. Currently in development, the customer service center application will help the Executive Office track interactions with the public and the progress of report requests from board members.
Wei notes that the flexibility and ease of use of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and the fact that it integrates with Microsoft Office and Microsoft SharePoint Serverhas generated a tremendous amount of interest from various divisions for new applications. “Because people have seen what we can do with the solution and how quickly we can deliver, the demand for new applications has increased significantly,” he says. “Because of our strategic planning cycle, we now have projects lined up through 2014.
Benefits
The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors Information Resource Management team can respond much more quickly to requests by using Microsoft Dynamics CRM. The new platform works with familiar Microsoft Office applications, offers greater security for sensitive data, and helps board offices keep track of constituent interactions.
“The Executive Office has been able to achieve savings, reduce resources, and help staff make their jobs less cumbersome,” says Hamai. “Strategically, this has empowered the Executive Office to streamline its operations so that customers are better served.”
In addition, the Information Resource Management team is using the development framework in Microsoft Dynamics CRM to create other useful and timesaving applications. These solutions, which require no additional licensing cost, help eliminate paper-based processes and improve the Board of Supervisor’s responsiveness to citizen needs.
“The Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors is doing more with less by using Microsoft Dynamics CRM to develop flexible, high-impact business applications to meet our demanding strategic plan,” Says Wei.
More Agile IT Department
The Information Resource Management team quickly found that its new solution is much more flexible and easier to modify than the old legacy applications. “We can accommodate requests for changes much more quickly by using Microsoft Dynamics CRM,” says Wei. “And, for content-oriented changes, we have trained staff in each officeso that they know how to modify the content on their own.They’re very happy to be empowered in this way and not have to rely on us for everything.”
For new business applications, building on the development framework in Microsoft Dynamics CRM means that the Information Resource Management team can deliver applications in months. “Instead of years, we’re completing projects in months,” says Zalace. “We’ve had a great response from Microsoft Dynamics CRM and people see the speed and quality of the results. Now, our programming staff can work much more collaboratively with our stakeholders.”
Improved Citizen Service
By using Microsoft Dynamics CRM, the Board of Supervisors can demonstrate what each office is doing on behalf of its constituents. “During weekly board meetings, part of the meeting is open to public comment where residents sometimes bring issues to the board’s attention,” says Zalace. “The constituent-tracking applications are often consulted during these meetings so that the board can pull up cases and cite what actions the supervisor’s staff has taken to respond to that particular issue.”
More Efficient Operations
The new applications that the Information Resource Management team created have significantly improved productivity at the Executive Office of the Board of Supervisors and freed employees to focus on more important tasks. “For the county service awards, the Human Resources department had one employee whospent 90 percent of his time identifying who was eligible for what award and what inventory was needed,” says Hamai. “Now, that person simply prints out a report with the information tabulated automatically.He is now able to focus on otherresponsibilities.”
Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics is a line of integrated, adaptable business management solutions that enables you and your people to make business decisions with greater confidence. Microsoft Dynamics works like familiar Microsoft software such as Microsoft Office, which means less of a learning curve for your people, so they can get up and running quickly and focus on what’s most important. And because it is from Microsoft, it easily works with the systemsthat your company already has implemented. By automating and streamlining financial, customer relationship, and supply chain processes, Microsoft Dynamics brings together people, processes, and technologies, increasing the productivity and effectiveness of your business, and helping you drive business success.
For more information about Microsoft Dynamics, go to: