We announced today an exciting Salesforce appeals management solution, AppealsTrak, aimed at helping government agencies streamline their appeals process. I sat down with Dan Osborne, Director of our Public Sector practice, to get his take on what opportunities for innovation this solution affords.

BG: Dan, can you start off by giving us a brief overview of AppealsTrak? Who is it for, and what does it help accomplish?

DO: Our AppealsTrak solution provides government agencies administering entitlement programs with a customized solution that manages the appeals process. The solution enables them to stay in compliance with federal time-lapse standards, enables due process, and positively engages both citizen and staff.

The federal government mandates that states administer entitlement programs such as Unemployment Insurance and humans services in accordance with  timeliness standards. Without modernization a large percentage of states cannot stay in compliance.

BG: How do you see AppealsTrak disrupting the appeals process as it exists now?

DO: This represents a completely new paradigm for agencies. According to a recent NASWA report, the average age of state benefits IT systems is 22 years old. There is no scalability and agility in these legacy systems; they cannot keep up with implementing legislative changes or scale with the cyclical nature of our economy. Moreover, the cost of maintaining these outdated systems increases year over year — as does the challenge of finding employees who can manage these systems.

The beauty of AppealsTrak is that it enables states to modernize — fast. Historically, transformation efforts in the Public Sector have taken years, at the cost of millions of dollars. AppealsTrak is built on the Salesforce1 platform, accelerating deployment to enable states to reduce the cost of modernization from legacy systems. States can modernize with an agile and scalable solution in weeks, not years. AppealsTrak was deployed in New Jersey in just 16 weeks.

BG: How does AppealsTrak scale and adapt to new legislation or unemployment program changes?

DO: It allows state departments to become self-sufficient in management — they no longer have to outsource system management to IT teams. This equips state departments to be more readily responsive to changes in legislation. For New Jersey, it was curative, but for other states, AppealsTrak can be preventative. They can get ahead of compliance issues by transitioning to this scalable cloud platform.

BG: So how will this affect citizens?

DO: It has a two fold impact on citizens:

1. Better Citizen Service
   
   Imagine as a citizen losing your job, your income, and then waiting close to six months to receive your unemployment benefits. AppealsTrak helped reduce the average time for managing an appeal in New Jersey from 189 days down to just 30 days, and they are still improving.
2. Cost Savings
   
   In the next three to five years, the federal government will spend an estimated $5 billion dollars to modernize state unemployment compensation programs. AppealsTrak cuts costs, is scalable from state to state, and ultimately, will translate to tremendous savings for taxpayers. 

This is an example of how one agency transformed. At the moment, Salesforce is not deployed in government agencies — we are at a tipping point for widespread agile transformations in government. Contact us to learn more about AppealsTrak.