The Goal

The UTC’s case intake and management solution was part of a fifteen year old Lotus Notes platform which was nearing the end of its maintainable lifecycle. Given this, the UTC decided to issue a request for proposal to find a partner to handle system upgrades, modern CRM deployment and data migration from the old system.

One of the UTC’s major requests for their new case management solution was that deployment focus on system configuration rather than development. Another requirement was that it align with the organization’s internal drive towards cloud solutions. The partner also had to be comfortable working with WaTech, the state’s IT operator, and its leadership at the Office of the CIO.

The Solution

While individual state agencies operate their business solutions independently, Celedon consultants determined that the consistent use of Microsoft enterprise and user software throughout the UTC and WaTech made Dynamics CRM 2016 Online the obvious choice for the UTC’s new platform. Strategically chosen and designed additions were then be built on top of Dynamics CRM to make case intake and management as efficient and transparent as possible.

Celedon’s experts worked with the UTC to understand their workflow and configure Dynamics CRM to surface important information to the right people. In order to do so their UX experts designed separate dashboards for customer representatives, supervisors and analysts. In addition, Celedon developers added a report creation tool capable of pulling all relevant records related to a case and rendering them inline for easy reference.

Cases themselves were designed to be straightforward for investigators to read and take action on, with a configurable process flow and the ability to link violations directly to reported companies from within cases. The system also uses reminders to help case workers keep track of open complaints and make the process as consumer friendly as possible.

Celedon’s engineers also developed additional tools to extend the new platform’s end-to-end functionality where necessary. One key aspect of the process was designing a new complaint intake form which would use internal business logic to automatically create cases, rather than require representatives to initiate them manually. This was accomplished using ADXStudio tools hosted on Azure and integrated with Dynamics CRM.

Results

By paying careful attention to the needs of the UTC and their case managers, Celedon Partners was able to design and deploy a modern, effective complaint management solution for their client. Their platform is flexible, powerful and more upgradable than the previous solution, which should save Washington State citizens money on future feature additions and installations. Automated web and email case creation has increased the efficiency of the agency, particularly given that the majority of their complaints are submitted online.

Celedon Partner’s thoughtful process also meant that more than half a decade historic case management data was migrated to the new system. During the process Celedon also facilitated the UTC’s move to hosting elements of their site on Azure to accompany their newly cloud-based CRM.

Thanks to their partnership with Celedon Partners, the UTC is now even more capable of protecting Washington State citizens, organizations, utilities and companies.