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Although it begins with the word “Sales,” Salesforce is about as far from being a solution exclusively for sales teams as S-Docs is from advocating for manual workflows (automation is where it’s at!). As a customer relationship management platform, Salesforce absolutely helps businesses crush it at sales -- but it also breaks down frustrating data silos, manages and automates marketing efforts, streamlines customer service, and provides valuable AI-based insights that aid every organizational layer from the bottom to the top.
Because of this, it’s no surprise that government agencies around the globe have started leveraging Salesforce’s eclectic capabilities to transform their citizen engagement and everyday workflows. The public sector has historically been slow to adopt new technologies like cloud-based CRM solutions, even if they've been established for some time. Salesforce and its partners have been vital to remedying this reputation and transforming the way government entities do business and serve their constituents.
How Are US Government Organizations Using Salesforce In 2022?
In a modern era that’s more connected and faster-moving than ever, government organizations face three big challenges:
- Managing legacy, on-premises systems
- Meeting ever-rising citizen expectations
- Maintaining compliance with regulatory requirements that are constantly growing
Legacy data systems aren’t built on the cloud and don’t allow for efficient communication between databases. These data silos can hurt productivity and communication, leading to everyday tasks being carried out slower than they could be, and ultimately hindering innovation.
Modern-day consumers expect proactive service, connected experiences, and personalization when they interact with companies in 2022. These new, ever-growing expectations don’t magically turn off when it comes to the government -- citizens now expect a much faster, cleaner experience that’s available to them from any device.
Additionally, government organizations are restricted by inflexible regulatory policies that are always growing, making it difficult to upgrade outdated systems and introduce innovative new strategies.
Salesforce and its ecosystem of partners, consultants, and independent software vendors diminish these challenges by reinventing the government’s relationship with technology. Because it’s so easy to set up, maintain, and customize, Salesforce is suited to improve the way any government organization works, from the United States federal government to government contractors and federally funded research and development centers (FFRDCs).
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How The US Federal Government Uses Salesforce
The US federal government is made up of hundreds of different agencies that all have their own unique business requirements. Salesforce is valuable to the federal government because of its infinite customization capabilities that make it a viable option for virtually any project imaginable. Little to no coding knowledge is necessary to build custom applications using the lightning app builder, and a host of ready-to-deploy applications built exclusively for government organizations are just a few clicks away on the AppExchange.
The power of using one platform for thousands of different projects cannot be overstated. Ordinarily, different branches of the federal government would need to develop or purchase hundreds of different solutions that don’t integrate well with each other and aren’t backed up in the cloud. Salesforce allows these many different branches to satisfy their needs with a singular platform that facilitates connectivity between each agency.
The United States Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) is just one federal government agency that leverages the power of Salesforce for a number of different projects. Most notably, Salesforce is being used to improve the caregiver program, which was originally approved to provide healthcare services to veterans injured on or after September 11, 2001, and give benefits to veteran caregiver households. Several attempts were made to develop an in-house IT system for the program, but when the MISSION Act passed, stipulating that caregiver program benefits eventually be extended to all veterans, it became clear that a new, scalable solution was necessary. The VA turned to Salesforce to better maintain the program’s data, track its progress, and ensure a smooth transition to covering more veterans and caregivers.
The VA recognized the importance of using one cloud-based solution for many different projects, and extended this philosophy to the applications that they use in conjunction with Salesforce. They leverage S-Docs and S-Sign for their document automation and e-signature needs, benefiting from our on-platform advantages like increased speed, security, and ease of use. Since they’re native to Salesforce, S-Docs and S-Sign mirror its look and feel, maintain compliance with all of its security requirements, and have the same server uptime. This makes them easy to implement, customize, and scale -- just like Salesforce.
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How State & Local Governments Use Salesforce
State and local governments also take advantage of Salesforce as one versatile platform. Most local government organizations have multiple departments that all offer different solutions for their citizens. A big responsibility of most of these agencies is direct citizen interaction, from answering questions to processing applications. Salesforce is a way to unify these different citizen touchpoints.
The District of Columbia’s Office of Unified Communications (OUC) implemented Salesforce for this very reason. As an agency responsible for both the city’s emergency 9-11 and city service 3-11 calls, it was already interacting with citizens 24/7. Several other government call centers were added to the OUC’s jurisdiction as well, including the Department of Transportation and the Department of Motor Vehicles. In addition, the agency’s twitter was responsible for answering questions and even processing service requests.
Salesforce Service Cloud was instrumental in unifying these different points of contact, giving citizens a consistent experience across multiple channels and providing service agents with insights into individual service requests and overall trends. Chatbots and automated call responses for the highest-volume call topics were introduced to increase productivity. Salesforce also alleviated additional costs incurred from legacy systems like maintenance required for updates and storage space. In addition, it’s extremely scalable, allowing the OUC to be the adaptive, proactive government entity that citizens and employees are looking for.
How Government Contractors Use Salesforce
Agencies directly connected with the government aren’t the only ones who use Salesforce to improve their processes. Government contractors also leverage its wide-ranging abilities to better serve their government customers and indirectly make an impact on the citizens that those governments serve.
Government contractors need to get in contact with government entities and maintain those relationships, which is why in this case, Salesforce really is about sales. Business development is a big responsibility for government contracting agencies -- they first need to find customers in order for their great solutions to make an impact.
Atlantic Diving Supply used Salesforce to grow from a small company to a top 50 Federal Government Contractor that supplies tactical diving gear and similar products to the United States Department of Defense and other government agencies. Using Sales Cloud and FedRAMP-authorized Salesforce Government Cloud, they were able to utilize data that previously slipped through the cracks to increase their sales and provide their products to more and more agencies. They also expanded their Salesforce usage to include Service Cloud, Event Monitoring, Identity Connect, and more.
Salesforce also improves the day-to-day lives of government contractor employees, allowing them to access mission-critical information from responsive, customizable mobile apps. The increase in productivity that this brings allows them to deliver the exact solutions that government entities need, right when they need them.
Salesforce Helps Government Agencies Do What Matters
There are thousands of different government entities throughout the United States and around the world, and we could go on and on about how many of them are using Salesforce to improve. Though their business needs are different, they all have one thing in common: using a secure, centralized platform lets them focus on what really matters. Salesforce gives them a 360 degree view into their constituents, their service requests, their project data -- whatever it may be, it’s easier to work with, customize, and scale using the power of Salesforce as a single platform across any number of different projects.
Applications that enhance Salesforce’s functionality should be the same way. That’s why S-Docs Document Generation and E-Signature is built 100% on the Salesforce platform, exclusively for Salesforce users. S-Docs uses powerful document generation technology to create sophisticated documents and send them for e-signature in seconds -- yet because it’s native to Salesforce, users don’t feel like they’re interacting with an external app at all. S-Docs is pre-integrated, meaning that users who already know Salesforce will know how to use S-Docs out of the box.
Since it’s built on the platform, S-Docs also enjoys the same uptime and security compliances as Salesforce. As the trusted partner to hundreds of government organizations around the world, S-Docs generates thousands of secure documents every day, automating manual tasks and pushing government productivity to the next level.
To see how your organization can benefit from native document generation and e-signature, contact us for a customized demo. Request a demo or reach out directly to sales@sdocs.com.
