Solution

Crisis Management Communication Platform

What this solution does: The PS Crisis Management Communication Platform coordinates a comprehensive, connected response.

Enables faster, two-way communication between the government and public
via incident reports, social media and email
Support proactive monitoring of people impacted by the crisis Streamlines the management and distribution of important resources

The Crisis Management Communication Platform (CMCP) empowers local governments and businesses to get information and resources to the public during a crisis – quickly and easily.

At the onset of an emergency, organizations in the public and private sectors struggle to coordinate swift responses that inform the public and manage the deployment of supplies. All too often, misinformation spreads faster than expert guidance and funds get tangled in red tape. It’s difficult to juggle outdated communication and management systems quickly amid a fluid situation.

In response to a crisis, businesses and government agencies need to accomplish three things:

Communicate new policies with a diverse group of people
Track people who are experiencing the crisis first hand
Distribute resources and/or funds to qualified employees, citizens and businesses

CMCP cuts through the confusion and chaos by giving governing bodies greater visibility into how a crisis is affecting different people. This enables that organization to communicate with the public directly, monitor the people most affected and manage the distribution of resources.

Lynn Lannin, state and local industry lead for Publicis Sapient, said the communication platform evolved from the strong product suite within Salesforce.

“There has been a lot of inconsistent information coming from the government throughout the COVID-19 crisis,” Lannin said. “The solutions set we put together is the combination of a few different projects that we’ve done and accelerators that we’ve built, which look at communication across channels to create a communication platform.”

This integrated platform centralizes key tools. The data gathered through the execution of one capability informs how the others are used.

CMCP delivers three crucial capabilities:

Communication: Bidirectional and cross-channel communication through in-depth incident reporting, social listening and email alerts
Monitoring: Active monitoring with in-depth incident management from inception to resolution
Coordination: Seamless management and distribution of volunteers and resources

The platform comes with widely applicable preconfigured forms and tiles that can be modified for local use. This accelerates setup and implementation while maintaining accuracy and quality.

CMCP features a responsive 311 app for non-emergency complaints or inquiries to ensure the public can share its knowledge with the organization. There’s a comprehensive suite of case management tools that help staffers respond to incidents or problems and integrates them into sophisticated mappings of the region.

The Social Studio Command Center makes it easier for public agencies to follow what the public is saying about a particular crisis on social media. Without leaving the platform, the government worker can respond to these comments and reach the public where they are already having this conversation – rather than merely hope they will visit the official website.

“The Social Studio component is really powerful because you can set up different listeners on social media to watch for trending keywords. The public agency can be agile in changing with those keywords over time and responding to specific posts,” Lannin said.

Publicis Sapient’s solutions for Salesforce, the cloud-based customer-relationship management service, don’t just power the social media aspect of CMCP. They help with resource management and interagency cooperation. With an effective service typically reserved for marketing professionals, local authorities can easily track how the crisis is affecting different individuals and demographics – as well as what they need.

CMCP also features an array of grant-management accelerators that help organizations manage the distribution and tracking of grant money.

In response to national emergencies, the federal government infuses money into the economy through stimulus and rescue packages. But separate entities are entrusted with dispersing the money to its intended recipients.

State and local agencies, financial institutions and related organizations have been inundated with applications for these funds. They need accelerators that can help to manage the deluge of requests from small businesses in a way that complies with all regulations and rules established for the ethical, efficient and transparent circulation of these important grants.

“It’s a platform we can install and get going very quickly because we’ve built it so many times before,” Lannin said.

CMCP applies preeminent marketing technology to local government projects in an unprecedented way. But it could also help businesses in the private sector that need to manage their supplies and workforce during fluid situations or organize their communications in a central hub.

The combination of focusing on state and local governments with a background in financial marketing technology – specifically a set of tools for the marketing cloud – differentiates CMCP from other services.