Driving better citizen engagement with Salesforce
The Town of Cary primarily uses Salesforce for its CRM, 311 center, and land development operations.
By consolidating all the data onto one platform, the Town of Cary — and its 1,800 Salesforce users — benefits from a complete 360-degree view of its citizens. “Everyone can use the same contact and account record to tie their services against,” Kevin says. This empowers them to resolve citizen queries efficiently, as well as deliver highly personalized program and service recommendations.
More than this, Salesforce acts as a crucial footing for digital innovation.
According to Kevin, the Town of Cary cannot buy off-the-shelf government solutions from Salesforce. Instead, his team must build applications and processes onto the platform themselves. One example is the town’s ongoing catalog of projects and services, launched in the mid-2010s. More recently, some of the contractors have been hard at work developing new 311 applications to streamline local service reporting and inspections.
Needless to say, since scrapping paper and pen processes decades ago, Salesforce has become the heart of the Town of Cary’s data-driven services. Without it, the municipality would struggle to meet the town’s expectations and drive citizen engagement.
This realization was a lightbulb moment for Kevin and his team. Conscious of the sheer importance of their data — and how catastrophic it could be to lose it — they were eager to bolster their security efforts.
Peace of mind with Own’s backup and restore solution
Guided by the desire to protect this data — and stay proactive amidst the increasingly treacherous cyber attack landscape — the Town of Cary approached Own for a reliable backup and restore solution. As a government providing service to its citizens, not having a reliable backup of their data was a concern. Upon exploring the platform, they saw value in the administrative tools that Own Secure brings to the table, such as the Who Sees What Explorer and other ways to easily research and manage provisioning in Salesforce, which can traditionally be very clunky and redundant.
Speaking of the driving force behind this adoption, Kevin says:
“We’re custodians of a lot of public records, and to have all of that go away — and to lose decades of permitting and infrastructure — is a very scary thought. All of this information is necessary to provide citizen services. So having our data secured somewhere is great peace of mind.”
With the help of Own Recover’s automated features, the Town of Cary can sleep easy knowing its citizens’ data is easily retrievable, should the worst-case scenario happen.
This backup and restore solution, while advantageous in its own right, also complements the Town of Cary’s extensive use of Own Accelerate’s sandbox seeding features.
Timely and secure sandbox seeding
Though the numbers vary, the Town of Cary has around 30 to 40 sandboxes in flight at any given time. Once upon a time, the process of seeding these sandboxes was complex and time-consuming. Creating accounts, tying them to the objects the Town of Cary needed to work with, and building dependencies took hours of tedious work — even when using CSVs. Not to mention, none of this data was automatically backed up.
This is what made Own Accelerate so compelling to Kevin and his team: “[Own Accelerate’s] sandbox seeding was super attractive to us because we’re constantly between our contractors and admin team. We’re constantly spinning up new sandboxes and trying to seed them.”
Utilizing Own Accelerate, Kevin and his team can:
- Populate sandboxes with realistic data at speed
- Eliminate the need for manual CSV creation
- Decrease errors when building out dependencies across sandboxes
- Gain visibility into who can see what data and why
- Back up all data automatically
Better still, the feature is highly intuitive. Sandboxes can be built in just a few clicks, which is a key selling point for the Town of Cary — especially considering they don’t have any dedicated Salesforce admins in the town.
Reinforcing data security standards
In the public sector, defining and managing sensitive personal information is a tricky balancing act. This is because the line between what is and isn’t sensitive is inherently blurred.
Speaking to this issue, Kevin states: “Most of our data is ingested from public sources. It may be classified as ‘PII insecure,’ but it’s already out there and publicly available.”
These contradictions have forced Cary to reconsider what data security and privacy mean in the public sector landscape. On the one hand, protecting citizen information is of the utmost importance — and fundamental for driving trust and engagement.
On the other hand, making citizen data accessible to others is often a necessity. “The reality is, if you apply for a building permit, your neighbor should be able to see it,” Kevin explains.
To balance accessibility with security, Cary required a flexible security solution.
With Own’s permission configuration abilities, Kevin and his team can fine tune data access controls to ensure contractors only see the data relevant to them. They can also tidy up eight years of messy permission settings, including duplications and redundant controls.
In addition to this, the team harnesses Own Secure’s anonymization features when sharing highly sensitive citizen data with contractors. This isn’t a question of distrust — more a demonstration of respect for the town’s citizens and their privacy.
“It’s not that I don’t trust my contractors; I just feel better about not giving personal information out to them,” Kevin says.
The Town of Cary is undertaking an effort this year to focus on reinforcing the foundational CRM data architecture and functionality within their platform. The current state has evolved over the last 6 or so years without any central authority or governance over the org. This has resulted in a lot of inefficient architecture and duplication of effort across the org. With Own Secure, they can get better visibility into object/field utilization to identify underleveraged or unused objects and fields for deprecation. They are also working to migrate their permissioning from the Profile to Permission sets ahead of Salesforce enforcing that change, so the visibility into what permissions are hidden on what profiles is essential.
Securing the Future
As public servants dedicated to serving their community, the stakes were high. They needed a dependable way to safeguard the information that citizens relied on, but their existing solutions were anything but secure.
As they delved deeper into the Own platform, they began to see a wealth of potential beyond just data security. Own Secure offered administrative tools that caught their attention, particularly the Who Sees What Explorer. This feature promised to simplify the cumbersome task of managing permissions within Salesforce—an area that had long been plagued by clunky, redundant processes.
Their organization was embarking on a strategic initiative aimed at strengthening the foundational CRM data architecture and functionality. Over the past six years, the system had evolved without centralized governance, leading to inefficiencies and duplicated efforts. The team saw in Own Secure not just a tool, but a partner in their mission to enhance visibility into object and field utilization, helping them identify underused assets ripe for deprecation.
They had another pressing task on the horizon: migrating from Profiles to Permission Sets ahead of Salesforce’s impending enforcement of this change. The insights provided by Own Secure regarding hidden permissions within Profiles were invaluable, enabling the team to navigate this transition with confidence.
Amidst these discussions, the team reflected on the broader implications of their findings. They had heard from other customers about reallocating funds and time savings, thanks to the efficiencies gained from using Own. However, this aspect hadn’t been fully analyzed in their case yet. Their representation of value had primarily been anecdotal, rooted in the emotional weight of safeguarding sensitive public data and enhancing their IT security posture.
As a local government, they were acutely aware of the delicate balance between ensuring easy access to public information and protecting their platform from potential threats. This reality fueled their resolve to make informed decisions, keeping both security and accessibility at the forefront of their strategy.
In meetings with higher-ups, the team articulated their vision, drawing from the emotional and tangible benefits of implementing Own. They shared stories of improved efficiency, a more secure data environment, and a more empowered IT department, setting the stage for a compelling narrative about the value Own could bring to their organization.
As they moved forward, it was clear that their partnership with Own was not just about adopting a tool; it was about transforming their approach to data management and security in the service of their community. With each step, they were building a foundation for a more secure future—one that would protect their data, streamline their operations, and ultimately enhance the services they provided to the citizens they served.
Increasing citizen trust with Own
Data is the crux of most business operations within the private sector — but the same can be said for the public sector, too. With a centralized, easily managed repository of citizen data, the Town of Cary and its contractors can streamline existing services and develop new, innovative programs.
Of course, the importance of not only wielding this data but protecting it cannot be overstated. As a government organization, the Town of Cary can only thrive with the trust of its citizens and contractors.
“We want you to trust us with your data,” Kevin emphasizes. He goes on to say that, without this trust, Cary wouldn’t be able to deliver essential services to a high standard — whether that’s processing planning permits or scheduling wastewater treatment.
With Own in its toolbelt, the Town of Cary can continue to test data, build new programs, and deliver stellar experiences — all without the fear of irreparable data breaches and citizen distrust. It’s a win-win.
