“A group of Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) employees worked together remotely to build a Salesforce-based app that speeds delivery of veterans’ benefits.”
“The new system, the Post Payments Workshop, is a module that lets VBA Finance Center employees see the status of a claim at any point in its life cycle — something they could not do in the past. Previously, staff at the VBA’s National Call Center or a regional office would upload a veteran’s claim of nonreceipt of benefits to the Veterans Benefits Management System (VBMS) VBA Finance Center (VBAFC) work queue. Center employees would manually track all of the requests to trace missing benefits – what the VA calls a tracer action– and each claim would be assigned to an employee to complete.”
“Now, with Post Payments Workshop, when veterans report not receiving their benefit payment, the inquiry is entered into VBMS and stored in the VBA corporate database. The data is transferred to the VA’s Salesforce platform, and the claim is assigned to the finance center to research…”
“Built on the VA’s Salesforce platform, Post Payments Workshop uses a three-tiered architecture: a client engagement layer on the Salesforce user interface, with workflow data stored on its Government Cloud; an API layer using MuleSoft; and the VBA corporate database, where source claim data is stored.”
“Using existing resources and Salesforce-certified administrators and developers, VBA built Post Payments Workshop in eight months. It went live for VBAFC customer support staff on Feb. 16.”
“’There were no further licensing costs to use the Salesforce platform because the end users already have a license for other applications,’ the spokesperson said.”
“The employees who built the app come from Financial Management Business Solutions, the VBA Finance Center and directorates in the Office of Financial Management in Washington, D.C., and Chicago. They used Salesforce to collaborate on the new system…”
“The employees who built Post Payments Workshop are now looking at creating a robotic process automation solution to assist with other repetitive tasks that National Call Center employees handle…” Read the full article here.
Source: Remote staff build Salesforce tool to speed benefits to veterans — By Stephanie Kanowitz, April 20, 2021. GCN.
