Contents

Summary

This standard outlines the guidelines and best practice for using Customer Relationship Management (CRM) services within the Department for Education.

Categories

The categories applicable to this standard are:

IT Operations
  • Application Operations
  • Business Relationship
  • Service Desk
Technical

Purpose

CRMs are a suite of business applications designed to manage customer information and streamline business processes. They can be used for internal-facing operational processes, but can also offer end-to-end capabilities that allow for external sector-facing interactions to take place, that will then integrate with internal operations. They can also integrate with other departmental services, such as payment systems.

CRM capabilities currently utilised within the department include use cases such as supporting contact centre operations, handling grant management processes, enabling data collection and general programme management.

Those looking to comply with this standard or learn more about it should contact the Solution Delivery Team, to ensure an appropriate development approach is taken.

How to meet this standard

Teams should use the products listed in this standard for the use cases provided.

If there is a repeatable or ongoing CRM requirement, then the service should use a CRM that aligns with the business area, so engagement can be managed and maintained on an ongoing basis.

If you are thinking of, or are already using alternative tools for CRM, please contact the Solution Delivery Team to talk about standardising data dictionaries (so services can be better supported in the future). or whether there is a case to move to a standard CRM product.

Any services that cover different use cases for CRM products should first discuss their needs / requirements with the Solution Delivery Team, who may be able to provide a service, or support with the design of these features.

Approved products

Approved product or service

Product or service
Dynamics365
Vendor
Microsoft
Version
Evergreen
Use-case
For contact centre, grant management, data collection, and programme management features, as outlined in the standard.

Exemptions

Exemption

Product or service
GOV.UK Forms
Details

GOV.UK Forms or Microsoft Forms can be used for one-off engagements and/or data collection tasks that don’t require ongoing relationship management.

Exemption

Product or service
Granicus Dash
Details

Granicus Dash is a case management and workflow tool that can be used alongside online forms developed in Granicus GovService.

Exemption has been given to using this product for Related Party Transaction (RPT) using this service ONLY.

If there is a requirement for this product to be used for any other Granicus GovService online form, then permission must be sought from the CRM Standard Owner and the Granicus GovService platform owner (Head of Digital Capture & Ingestion).

Requests should be made via the Data Collection, Data Service or Data Provision Request Form.

Exemption

Product or service
Zendesk
Details

Zendesk is a customer service solution and is integrated with some CRMs and services in the department.

Any new requested instances, or teams looking to update current instances, should contact the Solution Delivery Team to discuss their requirements.

Exemption

Product or service
ServiceNow
Details

ServiceNow is software specialised in IT service management (ITSM) and IT service operations management (ITOM).

There are plans to create patterns for sharing data between ServiceNow and CRM services.

Declaring conformance with this standard

Conformance with the standard must be recorded every 6 months.

Owner and contacts

Standard owner
Iain McIntosh
Head of Solutions Delivery
Other point of contact
Eddie Haynes
Lead Developer