Evolve for Government: US Census Bureau: CRM for Partnerships

The constitutional mandate of the decennial census is to count every person living in the United States. Getting full participation means a more accurate and efficient count. As familiar people within neighborhoods and communities, Census partners are vital to ensuring a complete and accurate count. They play a key role in raising awareness that the 2020 Census is easy, safe, and important. Learn how the U.S. Census Bureau used Pega CRM to enlist the help of these partners and coordinate with them on the outreach campaign.

Transcript:

-Hi everyone, and welcome to our session with the US census bureau. I'm Rasha Nahas, I'm with Accenture federal services. And I lead our work for the department of commerce account. Joining me today is our client, Jacob Wright. He is a census leader who helped drive the CRM implementation for the 2020 decennial and the enterprise. And today, we're going to learn more from Jacob about how he helped Census innovate with Pega CRM. Jacob, thank you so much for being part of Pega's evolve for government 2020. As we look at the success of the Census CRM implementation, can you please share what organizational mission required the start of the CRM journey at Census, and also why Census chose Pega for this journey?

-Hi Rasha, thanks so much for having me on today. So Census' mission to enable a complete and accurate decennial census required partnering with regional and national organizations to get out and spread the word. The partner onboarding process and tracking their interactions with Census needed a system to promote and sustain those relationships. And this really prompted our search for an effective CRM. Pega was selected as the CRM tool after conducting an AOA on several metrics for cost, impact, and value, all without compromising on security.

-So how did Census enable the successful decennial operations with Pega CRM implementation?

-Yeah, so for us in taking a user-centric design approach, Census was able to leverage the product set and features knitted on top of the Pega PRPC platform to fine tune implementation for specific operational needs with our decennial programs.

-And how did you organize and execute this enterprise size modernization effort?

-In collaboration with Pega best practices, we were able to customize our configuration to meet needs across multiple program areas, all the while ensuring a stable foundation for future expansion. I really think this fundamental approach combined with our proven success and user centered design allowed us to showcase the value and the impact of the CRM system on modernization efforts across legacy areas within the bureau.

-So how were you able to measure the success of the CRM program? What results, and metrics, and insights helped you get there?

-Yeah, so being Census, data is very important to us. We were able to utilize the Pega reporting suite to synchronously display partner activity data, combined with a variety of relevant program area KPIs, utilizing our customer engagement platform for Tableau visualizations. This really helped us to understand the effectiveness of the CRM interactions along with our CRM field related operations.

-What are some examples of innovations that made the user's day-to-day work more efficient?

-So here at Census, we were able to leverage Pega products to offer modern solutions for mobility, AI, integration, outreach, and insights. When we deployed the CRM mobile application to our field partnership iOS devices to provide them with an on the go solution for partner interaction and schedule management. We implemented an AI engine for business card scanning. We implemented integrations such as ESRI, Geocoding, single sign on, multi-factor authentication, and really many others that helped provide centralized data with added security. We were able to create impactful outreach with Pega email marketing by triggering customized outreach content at specific intervals along the journey.

-And are there any lessons learned that you can share with our audience today before they start on their modernization journeys?

Yeah, absolutely, so for us, proper planning, prioritization, and training throughout the development life cycle was key. Our success is attributed to designing for the end-user by capturing clearly defined requirements, taking almost constant feedback along with robust testing and training to ensure that the essential functions of the program areas were being met. Now, all of this combined with ensuring compliance with Pega's best practices will really allow for efficient and effective application development, while continuing to support the future growth of your CRM tool.

- Jacob, thank you so much for your time today. We're very happy that you're able to share the Census bureau's CRM implementation with us. And it's been our privilege to support you all along the way.

- Thank you so much for the invitation, Rasha.

- And thank you all for joining us today. We hope you found this session insightful. And we hope you have a great day.