Vermont aims to consolidate 300 CRM tools

Consolidation doesn’t end when a state’s hardware infrastructure has been centralized. Software, too, is often disjointed from years of decentralized management, and in Vermont, a top priority is to standardize agencies’ use of customer relationship management platforms.

In a video interview with StateScoop, Vermont state Chief Information Officer John Quinn says he’s evaluating several different possible solutions from the software company Salesforce.

“We have four or five different Salesforce pilots going on,” Quinn says. “We’ve been seeing how quickly we can develop apps and turnaround time and it looks like it’s going to be a great product for us in the future. It’s scalable, instant mobility, instant analytics.”

After selecting a solution, the state will be able to begin standardizing it CRM solutions, Quinn says.

“We have over 300 different CRM tools in state government right now, so being able to streamline some of those things and bring them in house and bring them into one solution is really going to work out well for us in the long run,” he says.

Quinn on his top priorities:

“Over the course of the next year we’re going to be working on our network. The governor appropriated $2.3 million for us to upgrade our network. We’re going to go to a software-defined network.”

Quinn on how his role will change with emerging technology:

“I think the CIO role is always changing. We went from a break-fix manager to a strategist.”

These videos were produced by StateScoop at the National Association of State Chief Information Officers’ midyear conference in National Harbor, Maryland, in May 2019.