Background
The State of New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions (“NMDWS”) is considered an innovator among state labor agencies managing Unemployment Insurance (UI) claims. A key part of this management process is holding administrative hearings through conference calls as necessary when claim decisions are challenged by either the employer or claimant. These hearings must be recorded and maintained for up to 10 years. Making sure that conference call administrative hearings are managed in the most efficient and secure manner was a key element in the Agency’s roadmap for continued modernization of its IT infrastructure. Additionally, being able to tie the recording directly to the Unemployment Insurance Tax & Claims systems case folder was considered ideal.
The Challenge
Obsolete technology and growing demand of business processes were causing ever increasing costs in maintaining the NMDWS’s existing on-premise communication infrastructure. With that in mind, switching to a cloud-based scalable enterprise softphone application with current communication technology was the logical way to go.
The NMDWS, in partnership with Deloitte Consulting, designed and customized their Salesforce CRM application with a cloud-based softphone solution that easily integrated with their platform.
The NMDWS established a list of requirements for the softphone solution to tackle the needs for managing the ALJs’ Unemployment Insurance administrative hearings:
The NMDWS established a list of requirements for the softphone solution to tackle the needs for managing the ALJs’ Unemployment Insurance administrative hearings:
- All the hearings should be conducted through softphone conference calls
- Each conference call lasts an average of one hour, and an average of 10 individuals participated in each conference call
- All conference calls must be recorded
- Audio recordings should be kept in a highly secured environment
- The solution should have API capability to allow downloading the recording to an on-premise server
- The hearing participants must not be burdened with anything other than a check-in number to call and providing a phone number for the ALJ to contact them at the scheduled hearing time
- ALJs must be able to individually manage calls with mute, hold, and disconnect capabilities
- The softphone needed to be flexible and user friendly, and at the same time had to permit application Administrators to make certain functions mandatory in placing conference calls to eliminate potential calling errors
The next step in the implementation plan was for the NMDWS and Deloitte to conduct the evaluation of various cloud-based softphone solutions.
The Solution
After conducting several rounds of evaluations based on criteria including product features, initial and operational costs, and information security, Software Next Door’s softphone solution – CloudCaller.io – scored highest among all products evaluated. The NMDWS decided to leverage its existing implementation of Salesforce.com CRM and replace the NMDWS’s existing communications infrastructure with a high-quality softphone solution tightly coupled with the Agency’s Salesforce CRM. The replacement softphone communication system has strong conference call capability to support Unemployment Insurance administrative hearings, and enables recording, storing and retrieving records of the conference calls within Salesforce, with effective integration back into the Unemployment Insurance Tax & Claims systems.
The NMDWS’s IT team and Software Next Door engineers worked together to solve network related issues during the implementation of the solution. Software Next Door, with support as needed from time to time from Twilio, the communication platform provider used exclusively by CloudCaller.io, showed great response time and capabilities for technical support related problems.
We are quite impressed by the CloudCaller.io application and SND’s understanding of our environment, requirements and vision. They worked with us not only on their communication solution, but on our ties back to and use of Salesforce and even in optimizing our network connectivity in the State.
Sue Anne Athens, CIO
New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions
The Results
Collaboration between the NMDWS, Deloitte Consulting, and Software Next Door started during the evaluation process. Software Next Door understood the need to offer a flexible cost-effective solution tailored to the needs of the Agency.
Software Next Door was able to quickly implement custom functionality for the interoperability between the softphone solution for holding the administrative hearing conference calls and the NMDWS’s Salesforce CRM application. The final outcome led to a comprehensive, scalable, secure solution for the Agency’s telecommunication needs which provided for cost savings.
I have seen a lot of technical projects which took a long time. This implementation was ready to go in only a few months and it works just like we needed it to. We now have the reporting and monitoring capabilities we need to proactively manage our teams, with pending and closed hearing reports and the ability to spot check hearings recordings and case information.
Reba Blackwell
New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions
Staff reported the following user-experience improvements, as part of post go-live staff survey:
- Reduced clutter and easy access to the softphone. Staff liked accessing softphone online while working with other computer programs rather than having to manage a desk phone and a computer system
- Added features and functionality, like ability to add unlimited number of participants in a single conference call, make facilitating and managing conference calls easier for the staff
- Significantly improved sound quality and better service to the hearing attendees
- Easy access to Administrative Hearing recordings
- Storing and presenting all case information including administrative hearing recordings in one place makes case orientation for the appellate staff easily manageable
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