Background
Digital transformation and IT modernization have been buzzwords in the U.S. federal government for some time now, but this buzz is rapidly giving way to tangible change. Paper processes are quickly being eclipsed by cloud-based alternatives that deliver higher security and efficiency - by orders of magnitude, in many cases.
One leading Salesforce consultancy recently helped a major department of the United States executive branch overhaul human resources systems with the help of Salesforce and S-Docs document generation, saving time for over 500,000 users.
The Challenge
This major defense agency has been on track for digital overhaul for several years now, as legacy systems are phased out and cloud solutions move in. Positive results in multiple divisions triggered an initiative to move the agency’s human resources department from paper to paperless.
The agency brought in a top professional services firm to lead the project. As experts in Salesforce for Government, the firm implemented Salesforce Service Cloud and Salesforce Experience Cloud to allow both HR staff and agency users to access and manage data from a single secure solution.
But there was still a challenge: a massive number of paper HR documents needed to be created, accessed, and signed on a regular basis. Moving record management to Salesforce but still needing to translate that data to paper documents didn’t make sense in contexts of efficiency or data security. This consulting firm needed to find a secure solution for automatically creating, e-signing, and storing the extensive documentation that the defense agency’s human resources department requires to function.
The Solution
It was clear that the consulting firm needed to deliver a solution capable of handling document generation and e-signature for over 500k users on the Salesforce platform - but it also had to hold up against the government agency’s Authority To Operate (ATO) certificate and protect the agency’s sensitive data at all costs.
With these requirements in mind, the firm selected S-Docs native document generation and e-signature for the task.
Department personnel can now log into the agency’s portal, hosted on Salesforce Experience Cloud, to access and sign HR documents in minutes, such as physical evaluation forms - S-Docs generates the documents with data pulled from Salesforce in the background. Service Cloud users also use S-Docs to instantly generate communications and other HR documentation as needed. These documents are automatically stored in Salesforce or external repositories for easy retrieval and management.
S-Docs saves extensive amounts of time not just for the HR department, but also for the hundreds of thousands of users they serve - and secures their personal information as a native Salesforce app.
Why S-Docs
The consulting firms chose S-Docs to support their government client’s needs for several reasons, but it all came down to S-Docs delivering on the required functionality, maintaining best-in-class data security, and allowing for fast approval & seamless implementation.
- Pixel-Perfect Documents: S-Docs allows this agency to easily create any HR document template they need right in Salesforce, or upload their own PDFs to tag with Salesforce data fields
- Powerful Generation: S-Docs is powered by Salesforce’s world-class platform, equipping it to serve the needs of hundreds of thousands of users generating a vast array of different types of documents
- ATO Ready: As a 100% native Salesforce app, S-Docs processes all data in Salesforce Government Cloud, making it easier to vet and approve - and its ability to encrypt field-level data increases compliance even more
- Flexibility: When the agency needs to convert their documents for long-term preservation, or store them in external document repositories, S-Docs makes it easy to do it all right from Salesforce
- Lightning-Fast Implementation: As an app built on Salesforce, for Salesforce, S-Docs is quick to set up, test, and deploy - and users who already know Salesforce can learn how to use S-Docs in no time
- Easy Ongoing Development: S-Docs provides an easy solution for exporting and importing templates across different Salesforce orgs, so as users test and create new templates in sandboxes and other environments, moving them to and from production is a simple process
All in all, S-Docs enabled the defense agency with the resource of time - document creation is faster and easier to maintain from one source of truth. But it also helped the consulting firm complete an impactful project that exceeded expectations and increased their trust by the public sector.
