The team sat down with Salesforce Professional Services for a Phase 0 strategic planning exercise. Together, the team interviewed 19 directorates and 38 SMEs to understand their unique challenges and needs. They explored what operational assistance was needed in order to support the level of complexity and identified gaps. They asked questions like what does world class look like? and what do we need to get there? They turned findings into strategic plans that included digital workflows, triggered by actions taken in the student’s profile vs. department-specific processes or operations.
“This helped us gain an understanding of what our stakeholders were trying to achieve and what is valuable to them from a non-systematic perspective, which enabled us to architect solutions that actually deliver against those outcomes. A human centred approach, where technology is built around the people,” said Warner. “We were always thinking about human centred design fundamentally, but didn’t really understand it as a practical framework. The Phase 0 exercise helped us align business needs and IT functionality, and become a business improvement team with a technology backbone.”
The result of this exercise: a student engagement platform on Salesforce Customer 360 for Public Sector. It gives DfE the tools it needs to not only document student data and information, but also make it actionable in real-time through the following five program-specific apps:
Support 360, DfE's Flagship App
Support 360 was built for students with special needs. Program enrollment, progress notes, assigned aids or other staff, and more are all captured in a personalised profile record built on Education Cloud. This gives DfE the ability to see the complete picture surrounding that student, document updates, tag subject matter experts on specific questions, and initiate any asks or action items all from the same profile record. For example: if a routine health and wellness assessment reveals a new area of risk, staff can record the results, note the change in status, and log a case to request additional services they feel might help bring that student back to a state of equilibrium. No logging into additional systems, no manually uploading results, no emailing support requests required.
If a student transfers schools this profile travels with them, enabling the new staff to review historical details as they plan a warm welcome. No guesswork as to where a file might be or if the file even exists.
Sister-organisations involved in supporting the student — such as healthcare professionals who need to weigh in on a student’s care plan or members of the judicial system who might have updates on critical information — can also access the profile record and contribute their latest guidance, or click a button and generate the necessary case files. Permissions can be set on a per-user basis, giving the right people (and only the right people) access to the right information. Integrated reports and dashboards enable DfE to look at their student body holistically, spot trends, surface patterns, and pinpoint catalysts that might inform care plans or resource needs the following school year. “We can demonstrate where and how we are supporting students with additional needs. We can record what’s working, and use that to inform decisions and help more students succeed,” said Warner.
Customer Feedback App
If a parent or guardian has a comment or complaint, an online form built using Omnistudio guides them through the intake process in a step-by-step manner, and then categorises the resulting case as level 1 (general complaints), level 2 (requires involvement from the school), and so on. If the school requires support from DfE’s customer feedback unit in order to appropriately and accurately respond, they can raise a similar ticket in the same app, link it to the original case, and work as one team across school and corporate to resolve the issue. Telephony integration is underway, which will increase the app’s omni-channel capacity going forward.
International Services App
If an international student is coming to Australia to study, their applications paperwork are stored in a personalised profile record in Public Sector Solutions. This gives DfE a complete view of the student’s history, study-abroad requirements, upcoming deadlines, and more so that the team can help track and manage student progress. If a South Australian resident is interested in opening up their home to house international students, they can use the same app to apply for the home stay program. A similar Omnistudio form to the one in the Customer Feedback app is underway here as well, which will guide hosts through the application process, which then feeds into CPQ to generate pricing quotes and produce the necessary documentation, respectively. “Consolidating this on one platform is saving us upwards of $50,000 AUD a year,” said Warner.
Incident 360, built to last
Incident 360 allows staff to report any health or safety incidents that happen onsite through another Omnistudio guided form process, including workplace accidents, bullying, and more. “We wanted to understand how many incidents were happening, what types of incidents were happening, if there are any patterns regarding a repeat perpetrator or repeat victim, and action it with the school accordingly,” said Warner. “We have to move quickly and address these events proactively before they become bigger issues. Because we did all the work up front to understand the business capabilities needed, we can do things like repurpose Omnistudio for all our frontend experience flows in-house and get to market that much faster.”
