InfoStrat's Townsend Report

Recently I have been working with federal agencies that are adopting commercial customer service techniques for helping government workers be more productive.

The new trend I am seeing is to add self-service functions to traditional help desks.  Government workers are telecommuting more frequently, and for some agencies can be scattered around the country or around the world, leading to challenges in call center coverage.

Younger government employees in particular are often more comfortable searching online than picking up the phone to call a help desk.  They expect from their government agencies the same kind of customer care that is offered by companies.

Here are some of the ways agencies can increase self-service for employees:

Publish FAQs and Troubleshooters on websites and intranets.   By providing step-by-step instructions, you can forestall some help calls and provide service even when the help desk is closed. You can seed the FAQs by analyzing historical trouble tickets and …

Microsoft recently purchased FieldOne, gaining a suite of products for Dynamics CRM which fulfill the business requirements of field services.  Field services are for organizations which send technicians, installers, or inspectors to customer locations.  FieldOne, now Field Service, is offered along with Dynamics CRM Online.

Scenarios for Field Service include
Building inspectorsMaintenance personnelHealth and safety inspectionAppliance installation or servicePlumbing, heating and air conditioningHome health careProperty managementSnow removal Highway maintenanceand many more The following video case study illustrates how Field Service helps customers manage their resources more effectively.


Dispatchers at company locations use Field Service to create a list of places to visit, schedule appointments and create an efficient route.  The following screen is a visual representation of the daily schedule.



Field agents can use the mobile solution on devices such as tablets and smartphones t…

As a user of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, I find myself creating my own views frequently, and sharing the most popular of them with other users at my company.  Here are some of the views that I use for Opportunities:

Opportunities by Owner. This is the most frequent view that I use for pipeline meetings.  Included fields are Topic, Potential Customer, Sales Stage, Est. Close Date, Proposed Date, Est. Revenue, and Owner. Opportunities with Proposals Due.  Add fields for RFP Received and Proposal Due dates. Filter by status of RFP Received and sort by Proposal Due date.  Great way for quick glance at proposals that are in the works. Proposed Opportunities by dollar threshold. Create a dollar threshold for what you consider to be large projects and apply it as a filter along with status of "proposed".  You can also sort by value in other views, but using this view allows you to exclude smaller projects and still sort by owner. Opportunities by Type.  We added a field to show the type…

My company InfoStrat works with government contractors to automate their capture management (sales) processes.  All government contractors strive to master GovCon capture processes to improve the sales results.

Large government contractors typically have mature and complicated processes which have many actors and steps.  Often they follow a sales process pioneered by Shipley Associates which helps companies win a higher number of bids through a more systematic business process and higher quality proposals.



What about small companies, or companies that are just getting started in government contracting?  Do they benefit from structured processes and sales force automation? How should their CRM system be different from a large company?

Here are some tips to get you started:

Read everything you can find on government contracting.  You will learn from the extensive literature on the subject.  Many books on government sales are available on Amazon and in libraries. Come up with a simple cap…