Whether you already have a dedicated team working with public sector clients or you’ve just started building your capabilities in this area, our insightful article will guide you through the four top reasons why Salesforce partners should grow their public sector domain expertise, along with some of the most cost-effective ways for doing so.
About Salesforce Public Sector Solutions (PSS)
Are you looking for new ways to future-proof your Salesforce client pipeline? No matter the size of your Salesforce practice, growing domain expertise in Salesforce Public Sector Solutions is a great way to align with the incredible growth opportunities within the Salesforce ecosystem.
Salesforce Public Sector Solutions completely transforms the delivery of public services—including state and federal government, local councils, emergency, and social services.
Public sector organizations can benefit from a range of pre-built tools that have been developed by Salesforce and adapted to the specific needs of the public sector, without losing the flexibility to customize these tools with ease, to match the unique requirements and processes of each individual organization. These digital tools can significantly improve workflows and save valuable resources for public sector organizations, while providing a seamless experience for the people they serve.
What challenges can Salesforce Public Sector Solutions solve for end-users?
As the world becomes more and more digitized and interconnected, public sector organizations face unique pressures to undergo digital transformation and switch to cloud-based services in order to meet the changing expectations of those who use their services.
For example, many council constituents would now expect to be able to apply for licenses and permits entirely online. And for good reason too, as this is far more cost-effective for them and the council than answering phone enquiries or having face-to-face appointments.
Naturally, meeting these expectations is not without its difficulties. We outlined some of the digital transformation challenges faced by public sector organizations in a recent article.
Thankfully, Salesforce Public Sector Solutions are built to meet these issues head-on. Consequently, there is a rising demand for Salesforce partners with expertise in Public Sector Solutions to help organizations worldwide implement these cost-saving features.
Here are just a few examples of the power of Salesforce’s Public Sector Solutions, and what it can do for public sector organizations:
Government Solutions
Effective cloud-based solutions to government and federal agencies, government contractors, as well as local and state councils. These include:
- Automatically generating licenses and permits, as well as managing application lifecycle and reviews with pre-built functionalities
- Performing complex calculations automatically, so that constituents can work out what benefits they’re entitled to by completing a straightforward online form
- Updating forms and workflows quickly and easily, whenever there are changes in regulations or policy
- Accessing key data on constituents in an easy-to-digest visual format, to inform important policy decisions
Emergency services
Pre-built capabilities to help emergency service providers successfully implement Emergency Management Services, saving valuable time and vital resources during times of crisis. These include:
- Automating the calculation of complex rates, fees, and grants, at the touch of a button
- Processing vast amounts of live data quickly and effectively to get an accurate, real-time assessment of a situation
- Supporting residents by quickly prioritizing and accurately allocating crucial resources with the pre-built Emergency Program Management functionality
- Accessing the full breadth of information about constituents, including individual history of any law enforcement actions, code violations, and more
Social services
Ensuring social services are operating cost-effectively, by helping social service organizations to track, manage, and disburse grants and forms. This, in turn, enables effective collaboration between social services employees, applicants, and program managers. These capabilities include:
- Delivering the right grant amounts to the right people at speed, with the pre-built Grants Management service
- Automatically generating forms and documents to a specified layout, such as Child Welfare Letter, and more
- Carrying out inspections anywhere with a few taps on a mobile device, and syncing that with the main CRM for an accurate picture of real-time data
- Accessing key data on constituents in an easy-to-digest visual format, to inform important policy decisions
Did you know that public sector authorities awarded approx. £4.43 billion in cloud services-related contracts between 2016 and 2021, with a staggering growth rate of 4.3x in contract volume? With the release of Salesforce Public Sector Solutions and its tailored offering, this number is only going to increase.
Salesforce presence in the Public Sector has grown exponentially in the recent years, accelerated by our recently signed MOU. Ensuring that we are able to provide capable, well-trained talent is a major tenet of our agreement with the UK Government. As part of its strategy for bridging the digital skills gap, we are working with partners to bring talent from within and outside Government into the Salesforce world. Revolent is one of our key partners in making this happen.
Interested in capitalizing on these incredible opportunities? Let’s take a look at four excellent reasons why Salesforce partners should actively invest in growing their public sector domain expertise, along with actionable tips on how to achieve this.
Reason #1: Lead with an industry solution tailored for the public sector
Since the early days of Salesforce (back in the distant past of 1999), the world’s #1 CRM has evolved into a custom solution, offering pre-built functionalities for a range of industries—with public sector being just one of many.
Prior to Salesforce Public Sector Solutions’ relatively recent release, organizations including federal government agencies, local councils, and government contractors would have typically had to rely on a Salesforce partner to customize the implementation of Salesforce Core CRM products like Service and Experience Cloud, if they wanted to reap the benefits that Salesforce offers, such as better connectivity, more efficient processes, and more streamlined data management.
But with the release of Salesforce Public Sector Solutions, these organizations can now select from a number of pre-built apps, designed for the specific needs of different public sector bodies. Which means that they no longer need to rely on Salesforce partners to figure out their needs and customize a standard Salesforce implementation accordingly.
What they do need, however, is help from Salesforce partners with specialist Public Sector Services expertise, who can advise them on which public sector features, tools, and workflows are best suited to them, and successfully implement these.
So, if you want to be the partner of choice that public sector organizations call upon, you need to build your expertise in this area with the right in-house skills and capabilities.
Reason #2: Deepen the expertise of your public sector practice
The biggest unique selling point of Salesforce Public Sector Solutions remains the same as that of the Salesforce CRM: customization. Public sector end-users can pick and choose what features they’d like to implement for their Salesforce instance, accelerating their implementation’s speed-to-value. However, they will likely still be looking to Salesforce partners who possess deep, demonstrable expertise in Public Sector Solutions’ wide-ranging features to guide them through the implementation process.
If you want to become their partner-of-choice, how do you make yourself stand out from the crowd and capitalize on the massive growth opportunities in the public sector, forecasted by Salesforce? And what’s the best way to demonstrate and market your expertise in this area?
First things first, you need to have deep knowledge and experience of the public sector industry, as well as Salesforce Public Sector Solutions domain expertise. Even if you’ve already helped several public sector organizations implement Salesforce, successfully customizing products like Service Cloud or Experience Cloud to meet their requirements, the starting point of any future conversations with prospective public sector customers will likely be: What skills and experience do you have in implementing Public Sector Solutions, specifically?
The best starting point is to invest in upskilling your existing team, especially anyone who has already worked on implementing Salesforce for public sector organizations. Make their credentials and experience shine in client meetings and your marketing efforts. Get ahead of the curve and become a thought leader of Public Sector Solutions before anyone else does. Join public sector forums and discussions, seek out opportunities to present at public sector events and conferences, and reach out to organizations directly to offer solutions to the biggest challenges they’re facing. Deepening your knowledge of public sector organizations and solutions that Salesforce can offer them will give you a good understanding of the most common challenges these organizations have, and how you can help to solve them.
Another way to deepen your experience in the public sector industry is by hiring people who have worked in tech roles within the industry and cross-training them on Salesforce Public Sector Solutions. And if you’re pushed for time to do this yourself, we just happen to have the perfect solution…
With a tailored candidate search, we can help you source the right mid-level tech talent with the relevant industry background and cross-train them as Salesforce Public Sector Solutions experts in a matter of months.
Reason #3: Pick a sub-sector to enhance your credibility and unlock more opportunities
As well as building your public sector domain expertise, you need to build credibility and trust among public sector clients and within the wider Salesforce ecosystem as well.
The biggest challenge here? Figuring out which sub-sectors to put your focus on.
Public sector is a huge industry, comprising of a multitude of organizations and public agencies, including:
- State government
- Federal government agencies
- Government contractors
- Local government
- Municipality or province councils
- Emergency services
- Social services
- Law enforcement
Why would these organizations be looking at implementing Salesforce Public Sector Solutions? Because it makes their operations more cost-effective and efficient, all while delivering a better experience for their user base.
Becoming a Salesforce partner-of-choice for these organizations, as well as building trust and credibility involves more than becoming a domain expert of Salesforce Public Sector Solutions. To make yourself really stand out, you need to develop specialist sub-sector industry knowledge. Attributes such as meeting specific compliance and regulatory requirements for public sector (for example, having Salesforce specialists who have passed certain government clearance protocols and are authorized to work on federal projects) will lead to more customer trust and, over time, position you as a domain expert.
Work out where your existing capabilities lie in terms of industry sub-sector experience. Focus on marketing these areas to prospective customers while building more advanced skills in these specialist areas. Longer-term, look to bring people into your team who have prior relevant working experience and industry exposure in the sub-sector you’ve chosen to specialize in.
Looking to hire Salesforce specialists with public sector domain expertise and prior industry experience?
Reason #4: Build long-term partnerships and customer loyalty
With the right sub-sector industry experience and public sector domain expertise, your advice and service will become invaluable to your customer. However, the public sector space, like many others, is ever evolving. And so is Salesforce Public Sector Solutions. As more organizations start to use the product, it will get even more refined, no doubt developing further as time goes on, with more custom features, tailored to the needs of specialist public sector organizations.
This is why it’s crucial to keep investing in your teams’ ongoing development to grow their public sector skill sets. This will enable you to offer ongoing support to public sector organizations beyond implementation, evolving along with your customers’ platform through continual upskilling.
This will also unlock new opportunities for upselling. For example, you may start by helping a government agency switch to the cloud and implement Salesforce Public Sector Solutions, for the primary reason of enabling them to publish dynamic forms on a public portal or conduct inspections and assessments more effectively.
However, once the organization has got to grips with the new features and seen their beneficial impact a few months down the line, you introduce your client to other features, such as streamlining their HR processes or creating automated processes for their IT service requests.
Or it may be worth exploring how your client organization can maximize its Salesforce implementation by getting other Salesforce add-on licenses, such as CRM Analytics with pre-built dashboards and predictive analytics, Einstein Relationship Insights, or Business Rules Engine, to name a few.
In fact, this is where your knowledge of 2-4 complimentary Salesforce specialisms would come in handy, working in perfect sync with your new public sector domain expertise to create real Salesforce magic for your clients.
How to develop public sector domain expertise in your partner organization?
With so much demand for Public Sector Solutions forecasted by Salesforce, partner organizations across the ecosystem are no doubt looking to capitalize on these massive opportunities. If you want to stay ahead of the game and position yourself as the Salesforce partner-of-choice with deep public sector domain expertise and industry experience of specific sub-sectors, you need to develop these skills, and fast.
There are two ways to go about this:
- Build advanced Salesforce Public Sector Solutions capabilities within your existing team
- Bring new Salesforce talent on-board, with domain skills and relevant sub-sector industry experience
Whether you’re looking to develop your team’s existing Salesforce skills to implement advanced solutions for the public sector or bring specialist talent on board with deep domain expertise, Revolent can help.
Build advanced Salesforce Public Sector Solutions capabilities with Revolent ReSkill
We can help your existing Salesforce specialists develop expertise in Salesforce Public Sector Solutions, with minimal disruption to any ongoing projects in a matter of weeks.
Our Salesforce Public Sector Solutions (PSS) Training Program is specifically designed to equip participants with the knowledge and skills necessary to effectively utilize PSS in state, local, and federal environments. The course provides comprehensive instruction on key public sector use–cases including Grants Management, Child Welfare, License, Permits & Inspection, and more.
Benefits to you
- 60 hours of instructor-led training, enhancing speed-to-deployment
Your employees will gain hands-on experience with our training, inclusive of 24 hours of practical exercises, use-case-driven case studies and real-world scenarios, as well as 12 office hours, enabling them to leverage the full potential of PSS in their projects.
- Minimal disruption to business continuity
The PSS program can be completed over the course of 2 weeks (full-time) or 12 weeks (part-time) with a total of 60h of training, ensuring minimal disruption to any ongoing projects.
Bring net-new Salesforce Public Sector Solutions talent on board with relevant prior public sector industry experience
Our Salesforce talent programs are designed to help you find the specialists you need to solve the specific skills shortages within public sector teams.
With access to specialist Salesforce recruiters and the highest number of Salesforce-certified trainers within the ecosystem, we can hire, cross-train, and deploy delivery-ready Salesforce talent with crucial consultancy acumen to your teams in as little as 8-12 weeks. Once these specialists or ‘Revols’ have started working on your team, they’ll complete our Public Sector Solutions Training Program, developing deep domain expertise that’s tailored to the needs of your partner organization and the public sector clients you work with.
Benefits to you
- We source the talent and cross-train them in Salesforce
Just tell us what your ideal candidate profile looks like, and we’ll take care of the rest!
- Find employees for anywhere from 6 to 24 months
No matter where your organization is based, we can help you find implementation-ready professionals with the right credentials and specific public sector requirements, such as government security clearance.
- >80% convert to full-time employees of yours at the end of the program
After completing a work placement at your organization for a period of up to two years, 83% of our ‘Revols’ join our clients’ permanent teams, helping them to significantly cut down on recruitment costs for contractors and boost retention rates across their teams.
