The City Of Casey recently completed a CRM Conference Room Pilot. The purpose was to validate CRM vendor’s solutions against the business processes of our end-users of the software. Win an apples with apples comparison we requested the vendors to each carry out the same set of typical or key business processes using their new software. A commercial advantage of a conference room pilot is that it may allow the customer to prove that the new software will do the job (meets business requirements and expectations) before committing to buying the software, thus avoiding buying an inappropriate application.

The largest difficulty with CRM selection is that each major vendor are adept at displaying the well featured areas of their software and distracting from their deficiencies.

A Conference Room Pilot offers the chance of an apples with apples comparison. Each vendor must demonstrate their method of fulfilling the business requirements of the described use cases we nominated.

In a Conference Room Pilot what is not demonstrated can often be more illustrative than what the Vendors focus on. In an area a vendor's product may be deficient, they are likely to gloss over or only partially demonstrate that area. For example, even the top Gartner Magic Quadrant and Forrester Research leader may not choose to demonstrate reconfiguration of their mobile app on the fly.

The Conference Room Pilot proceeded with these steps:

1. Use Case selection and acceptance
2. Conference Room Pilot
3. Vendor briefings preparation
4. Inviting and briefing vendor on the Conference Room Pilot
5. Socialising the Conference Room Pilot process internally
6. Working group briefing and education on CRM and training for scoring vendors
7. Scoring designed
8. Vendor Q&A by email and phone
9. Vendor presentations
10. Scoring by subset of the working group

The Conference Room Pilot was designed to be for information only to be followed by a formal procurement process. A Safe Harbour notice to that effect was included in the vendor briefings. This was specifically a functional review. Other aspects of procurement including costing and non-functional requirements are to be covered in the formal procurement process.

Starting with ten use cases, an internal process was undertaken to align around the final four use cases for the Conference Room Pilot that were illustrative of the diversity and complexity of work processes at the City Of Casey:

• Universally recognised importance (internal and external)
• Productivity benefits
• Opportunity for quick win
• Systemic change value
• Total cost of ownership benefits
• Has an existing user journey, previously socialised in Council
• PR benefit for Council
• Alignment with customer success approach

Four use cases were selected for the Conference Room Pilot. Vendors were provided these assets for each use case:

• Use case narratives for each current state and redesigned workflows
• Interface redesign views
• UML diagrams
• Personas, internal and external
• CRM modules required to be demonstrated
• User interfaces for each use case actors

Vendors were requested to provide the following in their Conference Room Pilot presentations:

1. Demo of two Use Cases
   1. Redacted
   2. Abandoned Vehicle
2. Narrative response for two Use Cases
   1. Redacted
   2. Property flooding
3. Four optional vendor requests
4. Customer examples
5. Customer References, similar Councils

Conference Room Pilot Presentations were delivered between 9 – 19 November 2020.

Redacted

Currently the process for managing abandoned vehicles is a time-consuming offline process including double handling of data, no integrated field service attendance scheduling. In this case, after a report of an abandoned vehicle impeding a roadway, a Local Laws Officer attends site. They take photos etc. and call a towing service. The reporter is never updated or thanked when the vehicle is towed.

The reporter uses the Casey app which helps her take photos one of which is used for number plate auto-identification. The Local Laws Officer is re-scheduled in the field to attend. They update the case using a mobile field service app including tasking a towing service. The reporter is advised of the towing and thanked.

Community member reporting interface

Local Laws team member interface

Redacted

A resident reports falling after tripping on a bulging section of a concrete walking path at the rear of a park bordering some houses. The Council sends a contractor to shave off the bulge. The work is completed.

At the request of the resident, Council attends the property but the resident is not at home and cannot see evidence of the flooding. The job is closed.

Later, the irate resident rings to complain again that the flooding is getting worse. Council attends again and this time finds the flooding at the rear of the property. The Council engineer personally knows the home abuts a park and as the weather is dry, they check the park and find a very sodden area adjoining the property.

The resident’s daughter, who is a lawyer, initiates efforts to recover the costs of rebuilding the lower floor of the property.

A resident reports falling after tripping on a bulging section of a concrete walking path at the rear of a park bordering some houses. She does this with the Casey Mobile app.

The Council sends a robotic grinder to shave off the bulge. The work is completed and when reviewing the video filmed by the robotic grinder, the Case customer service officer notices a sodden area. They refer this to Drainage and Stormwater Management. An Engineer from Drainage and Stormwater Management attends site. Drainage and Stormwater Management team do their magic to fix drain broken by tree (outside scope of Use Case)

The resident’s daughter calls about the noise in the park.

Each use case included an optional vendor request focussed on the ease of system configuration which CRM vendors will only generally display when it is in their interests. Below are the optional vendor requests. There was one for each use case.

Redacted

Low-code or no-code configuration changes are important to Casey. This is an optional vendor request to demonstrate live during the CRP.

Reconfiguration of app during demo to change the shape, label and colour of the red Warning button in the workflow for the Local Laws Officer.

Redacted

Low-code or no-code configuration changes are important to Casey. This is an optional vendor request to demonstrate live during the CRP.

Adding any Internet Of Things device during demonstration, ideally a Roomba or similar device.

There were 55 items to score. They closely mirrored the items in the demonstrations required of the vendors. Scoring was on a one to five basis with one decimal place as recommended by Gartner. We requested the scorers to align their scoring around ease of use, intuitive interfaces and simplicity.

The 55 items to score were broken down by use case. They were broadly functional requirements. As an example, these were the Abandoned Vehicle use case items scored against:

1. Reporting of abandoned vehicle including mapping using app
2. Visual recognition of licence
3. Automated case creation and routing for triage
4. Emails sent to reporter with summary of report
5. Check of external database for registration status
6. emails and SMS to Towing Service with task description (job request, review and acceptance)
7. Optional: Reconfiguration of app during demo to change the shape, label and colour of the red Warning button in the workflow for the Local Laws Officer.
8. Role: Resident reporter Interface: Casey App on mobile
9. Role: Local Laws Officer Interface: Field service app on mobile
10. Role: Towing Service Interface: Portal
11. Role: Abandoned/Derelict Vehicle Coordinator Interface: CRM Dashboard

Conference Room Pilot scoring was completed by this subset of working group members:

Redacted

These were the average vendor scores for each scorer:

These were the results scored in aggregating questions by use case:

Each question was linked to an area of core CRM functionality as defined by Gartner. These were the results when questions were scored by core CRM function:

As an example, these were the interfaces scored for the Home Care use case:

1. Role: Home Care Admin Interface: CRM dashboard
2. Role: Home Care Assessor Interface: Field service app on mobile
3. Role: Service Recipient Interface: MyCasey app on mobile
4. Role: Cleaner Interface: Casey portal

The list of optional vendor requests is described in Optional vendor requests.

These were the vendor requirements for the Conference Room Pilot:

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