"The implementation was incredibly disruptive. We pretty much blew upthree departments," Armstrong explains. "I was not prepared for thedepth to which it would affect the organisation." He attempted to easetensions by admitting he messed up. "The best thing you can do is takethe heat," he says. And he learned some valuable lessons in how not tointroduce a huge, new system to reluctant employees. He had rushed theimplementation, promised more than he could deliver and underestimatedthe amount of change the city could absorb at once. Two years later,he applied those lessons as he attempted to introduce technology thatwould automate how Des Moines received, managed and resolved requestsfrom its 200,000 citizens.

You Can Right City Hall

Armstrong knew that he needed buy-in from all 15 city departments tomake the CRMCRM system a success. With that in mind, he plotted hisstrategy. First, two of his project managers spent a year talking tocity workers to find out what they did when they received calls. Thoseconversations led to a useful outline of the more than 1,250 differenttypes of calls the city received--from trash pickup and potholepatching to barking dogs and cats up trees. It also made the usersfeel important. Alles zu CRM auf CIO.de

Based on the city's needs and budget constraints, Armstrong decided tospend US$300,000 on the whole project using Heat software fromFrontRange Solutions.

To alleviate any potential alarm about lost jobs or reorganisation,Armstrong decided against going to a central call centre to operatethe system. "We didn't want people to feel that their jobs were beingthreatened, especially at a time when we're trying to get knowledgefrom them," Armstrong says. "And we didn't want to have to reeducatethe public, many of whom had gotten used to calling specificdepartments or even a specific person they knew by name, when they hada problem."