Client Impact Story

Demonstrating real impact statewide

The State of Arizona specializes in the business of IT

First, the client and their unique needs

The Arizona Department of Administration’s Strategic Enterprise Technology (ASET) Office is responsible for the development and execution of statewide IT strategic planning and provides enterprise shared services to over 130 Arizona agencies. In the past, paper-based manual processes considerably reduced collaboration and IT innovation throughout the state. By collaborating with MST Solutions (MST) and enhancing their existing Salesforce platform, ASET leveraged cloud technologies to increase workflow efficiency, standardize data capture and improve the customer experience it provides to agency CIOs. Today, ASET uses a single Community portal to gain greater clarity into state agency IT strategic plans and providing a centralized view of key insights into statewide IT challenges and opportunities for enterprise initiatives.

Business Challenges

As the IT think tank and enterprise-level executor for the state, ASET requires all statewide agencies to submit their IT strategic plans each fiscal year. Those plans are then analyzed by ASET to find synergies and recommend the most efficient solution possible in alignment with the state’s IT strategic plan. Prior to leveraging Salesforce, those plans were submitted and processed through a variety of paper-based and legacy technologies, including word documents and spreadsheets. ASET needed to create trust with state agencies while operating under a federated model, meaning each state agency, board and commission has the authority to make decisions based on what they feel is best for their customers.

In order to align the organization with the governor’s objective to “operate at the speed of business,” ASET created a Business Engineering organization. Acting as a business-like startup within ASET, the team took a customer-first approach not only in how they were structured, but also in how they engage their customers and the technologies they leverage to do so. One main component of the strategy is tied to the collection, compilation and visualization of IT data.

Our Solution

Business Engineering decided to use Salesforce Service Cloud as its Customer Relationship Management (CRM) infrastructure and Community Cloud to build its self-service portal. ASET then partnered with MST Solutions for the additional business and technology resources required to customize the Service Cloud and Community Cloud applications.

The solution uses standard Salesforce account and case management functionality to deliver a 360-degree view of agency information and streamline its Project Investment Justification (PIJ) and IT strategic planning services.

To meet the reporting needs of the State of Arizona, the solution also includes an advanced reporting dashboard and trend analysis through Einstein Analytics.

Technologies Used

Service Cloud

Community Cloud

Einstein Analytics

The Results

Reduced PIJ approval time from 21 days to 10 days

Increased agency strategic plan participation by +250%

$35M+ saved on IT projects

Switching to a cloud-based solution has helped ASET deliver on its mission of streamlining Arizona’s technology investment and making the best use of taxpayer dollars. The new digital collaboration environment provides a simple and efficient way for agencies to work with ASET. Arizona agencies are now notified of deadlines proactively and have a self-service portal they can use to submit, track and review IT projects and plans, or reach out for support. Business Engineering receives timely information from the community portal straight into their Salesforce CRM platform, simplifying the intake, standardized data capture and workflow process associated with PIJ and IT strategic planning responsibilities.

The cloud first mission has been further enabled and is now providing Arizona agencies a glimpse into the future. Moving to a single customer interaction platform has made it possible for ASET to dramatically improve communication and collaboration, accelerating the journey to delivering the world-class agency experience their customers expect.