Business Case
DCSS required expert system integration and project management resources to upgrade 10-year-old Siebel Call Center installation. The upgrade would benefit local agency child support workers, the State-run call center, and the public. The Local Agencies access the Siebel CRM Portal and Oracle BI systems to deliver services to the public and to send and receive service requests to the State Child Support Administrators. The DCSS call center provides front-line customer service representatives the ability to access current case and call notes information and answer questions from custodial or non-custodial parents on the setup and monitoring of child support payments. DCSS also needed to record service requests for outbound calls to employers for the setup and maintenance of wage collection required by Family Court.
The project was part of DCSS’s and Conduent’s larger 9-month Transition Program which included upgrades to other systems including a two-way data flow from a legacy case management system, a finance accounts receivable and payment system, telephony routing, circuits, scanning, and letter generation, as well as upgrades to hardware, the network, and the physical plant.
With ten years since the last technology refresh, the legacy system lacked open user interface functions and features, had dated security protocols, and was configured without the ability to send two-way service requests between Local Agencies and the State. There was also a lengthy and intermittent nightly data refresh process. The system also lacked access to Business Intelligence capability and a data model which met business needs for static and ad-hoc reporting with a strong profile driven access control.
The client required housing the solution on new hardware and reimplementing its Oracle Business Intelligence platform on Exalytics. For users, the need was to offer self-service analytical reporting to State and Local Agency users. The total number of users, including State, local, and operations contract staff, exceeded 2500.
The Solution
CMA responded to the procurement solicitation with Conduent and OTDA with a fixed price and fixed duration statement of work.
CMA fielded a team of seasoned resources with functional, architect, development, test and infrastructure skills in Siebel IP2017, Oracle Data Integrator, Extract, Load and Transform (ETL), Oracle Business Intelligence and project management.
The primary deliverables were:
- Upgrade Assessment and Planning
- Conduct Functionality Optimization workshops
- Create and upgrade the Development Environment
- Create and upgrade the Test Environment
- Create and upgrade the Production Environment
The final deliverables with input from Conduent included:
- Operational Readiness Checklist
- Production Upgrade Instructions
- Knowledge sharing workshops
- Turnover Plan
The Results
Despite a delayed start of the upgraded hardware installation, CMA delivered the CRM and BI solution on time and on budget. Conduent and DCSS selected CMA to continue with two monthly operations contract extensions to facilitate additional transition support with the client’s local and offshore operations teams.
For the first time, State, County, and operations staff can access user configured data analytics and reporting on key performance indicators tracking the frequency of questions by county or statewide. Local agencies are also able to create service requests directly to the state and reply to follow up questions. Existing call center functionality continues, and each user group is offered open User Interface capability for mobile device and touch screen devices. Security is enhanced by switching to HTTPS protocol, and the overnight batch update processes to and from external systems are more reliable.
CMA was the right choice to create and implement the solution because CMA brought:
- Siebel CRM 2008 to IP2017 upgrade experience
- Siebel CRM 2008 and IP2017 Siebel Tools knowledge to fix workflows
- Working relationship with Oracle Corporation Siebel product team and Oracle Support
- Oracle Business Intelligence and Data Analytics Reimplementation Expertise
- Oracle Data Integrator Mastery
- Exalytics Configuration
- Web Services Integration with External Systems
- Systems Project Management
- Requirements, Testing, and Design, Development, and Implementation Progress Reporting Tools