1. Salesforce – A new way forward
JUNE 2018
Marie George, VA Salesforce Team

2. VBA and Salesforce:
VBA has purchased access to the Salesforce platform. Salesforce enables companies/agencies to develop programs and functions for their specific business lines, allowing customization, even after going live.
This is a significant cost and time-savings for the government compared to the traditional acquisition, development and delivery model. It also provides ownership and control over the development and administration of each platform and function.

3. EFORCE – An Overview
Education Service has developed a Salesforce application called EFORCE. This is a web-based cloud computing application, that is easy to learn and use. Our vision is that with the launch of EFORCE, users will be able to view a listing of those modules within the framework, and hit select. This provides us the flexibility to tie the functionality and communicate in real time. Education Service’s Approval, Compliance, and Liaison (AC&L) division has lead the way, beginning the “one-stop shop” approach for all things Education. The more we develop and utilize Salesforce, the more successful we will be in providing quality services to our Veterans and stakeholders.

4. History of EFORCE
Prior to December 2016, Western Region C&L worked with the VA Center for Innovation (VACI), Office of Field Operations (OFO) establishing an initial Salesforce platform.
As Acting Chief of the AC&L Division (Super CELO), Jeffrey Harbeson, Assistant Director, directed me to take charge of the salesforce project. Our vision was to build it out, increasing the platforms’ functionality across all regions.
The initial team members included myself, Lori Record and Joe Preisser, Management Analysts (MAs) for Central Region C&L, began working with Western Region C&L MA, and OFO, in developing Salesforce.

5. History of EFORCE (cont’d):
We established our first contract October 2016 for Education Service, AC&L buildout.
VACI assisted Education Service in obtaining the services of Acumen Solutions in December The development team met with Acumen Solutions and VACO staff (all four CELOs Subject Matter Experts) in Washington, D.C. the week of January 12, 2017, four days of collaboration and training.
This began the EFORCE project, setting in motion a collaborative vision, including the overarching goals, identifying web tools, and gathering input for our new one stop shop platform.

6. EFORCE – Compliance
Project Establishment Goals & Deliverables for the Compliance Module:
GSA Vehicle tracking
Trip Wrap-Up
Scheduled Facilities
Quality/Compliance
SAA access
Build response fields to enter findings (over & underpayment) on referrals
NOTE: this is not a complete list.

7. EFORCE - Approvals
New Functionality for the Program Approval Module: • Approval Process (ELR and SAA) • Standardization of the Approval process • Suspense & withdrawal of facilities • Quality for approvals • Reconcile Tableau data with Approval/susp & wdapproval data/suspensions/withdrawn facilities NOTE: This is being deployed at the end of this month, with only 6 states testing for the remainder of FY18. The above functionality is not a complete list.

8. EFORCE June 2018
How does this benefit School Certifying Officials? As a web-based (cloud) platform, it is currently being used by many different federal agencies. In VA< the Center for Excellence (COE) works with all VA business lines to utilize this database.
The benefits of using Salesforce are:
A customer relationship management product
Streamline communication
Reporting features
Ability to upload legacy data
NOTE: Our goal is to use analytics to streamline reporting and communication between all stakeholders.

9. VA Use Only
EFORCE Vision

10. VA Use Only
EFORCE for SAAs
SAA Home Screen

11. EFORCE Community Portal
A community portal is a “gateway” for communication and document sharing between VA and outside stakeholders.
We would like to build an EFORCE community portal specifically to communicate with SCOs and SAAs, allowing seamless collaboration, secure data transmission, and a completely paperless process.
The portal could also have “Knowledge articles” – information relevant and helpful to SCOs, SAAs, and all VBA Education Stakeholders.

12. EFORCE Community Portal – Front Door

13. Community Portal Stakeholders
Three Stakeholders:
State Approving Agency access to deliver to VA those
Program Approval Documentation for acceptance by their
ELR.
School Certifying Officials upload compliance survey
required veteran student records after the survey invites
you to provide that information electronically.
Complaint tool will require veteran students access to
provide their complaint in a secure environment.

14. VA Use Only
EFORCE – GI Bill Page

15. EFORCE – An Education Salesforce Team
The team’s specialization in both Education Service and Salesforce makes it uniquely positioned to be a liaison and become subject matter experts.
Education Service (VACO & VA/SAA Field staff)
EFORCE Team
VBA Business Lines (OPBI and DTC)
Contractors
(Accenture/ Acumen)

16. EFORCE June 2018
Questions?