CUSTOMER SUCCESS: IMPROVING CUSTOMER SERVICE FOR STATE EMPLOYEES

North Carolina Department of State Treasurer saves time and money by providing easier, secure Internet access to critical information for its employees and vendors

The North Carolina Department of State Treasurer oversees a wide variety of administrative and management activities. Providing North Carolina's citizens with first-class service requires extensive technical and administrative resources to manage a broad spectrum of programs, investment funds, and initiatives. Recently, the Department of State Treasurer faced the challenge of increasing accessibility to its host system to provide state employees with a significantly higher level of customer service.

With numerous requests for information about employee benefits, the department's Retirement Systems Division required a solution that offered fast and easy access to host data for various state agencies and third-party service providers. In particular, the North Carolina Department of Transportation (DOT) as well as BB&T Corporation—the administrator of the state's 401(k) and supplemental retirement plans—needed quick access to information about state employees' retirement benefits.

The department's IS staff realized that providing Internet access to the host system could deliver immediate relief to the Retirement Systems Division, while enabling the DOT and BB&T to respond to state employees' inquiries easily and promptly. To accomplish this, the IS staff needed a solution that could solve the access problem without introducing new hardware or software that would require excessive maintenance or user training.

Maximizing Host Resources Simply and Securely
After researching products from various vendors, Doug Piner, Web manager for North Carolina's Department of State Treasurer, chose the IBM SecureWay Host Integration Solution. Working with IBM Business Partner Software Spectrum™, the department's IS staff installed IBM SecureWay Host On-Demand and the Host Publisher function—included with IBM SecureWay Communications Server for Windows NT—to provide highly secure Internet access to host applications and data.

Executive Summary Problem State employees and external vendors need faster, easier access to a variety of 401(k) retirement plan information Solution IBM SecureWay Host Integration Solution, IBM Host On-Demand, and Host Publisher function (part of IBM Communications Server for Windows NT) Benefit The new solution provides secure, simplified access to improve customer service without introducing additional training or maintenance requirements

With the Host Integration Solution, developers can easily create applications tailored to each organization's specific needs. The Host Integration Solution also offers significant timesaving benefits as well. The IBM software was delivered to the IS staff online, making setup easy and convenient—and enabling the IS staff to add functionality without the traditional, time-consuming processes associated with mainframe development.

With the IBM products, processing occurs on the Web server rather than on the mainframe. "Not having to touch a mainframe application—and the ability to display mainframe data to the Web easily—was a good selling point for me," says Piner. By eliminating the need to reprogram existing applications and databases, the Host Integration Solution also provided the Department of State Treasurer with substantial cost savings.

Simplifying Application Development
Piner was equally impressed with how easy it is to develop the applications. Having the capability to write programs using JavaScript™ was a definite advantage. "The technical skills required weren't nearly as intensive as with some of the other products," he explains.

Because application development takes less time, the Retirement Systems Division hopes to eliminate the backlog of requests faster. Employees at the DOT and BB&T have also found the new applications easy to use. Now they can access host data and applications over the Internet by using standard Web browsers.

Streamlining Information Access
Improving customer service for state employees required the IS staff to develop host applications tailored to the specific access needs and computing environments of both the DOT and BB&T. "The solution provided a pretty streamlined answer for the DOT and BB&T," observes Piner. "Host On-Demand and Host Publisher are definitely bureaucracy busters."

With approximately 15,000 employees located statewide, employees at the DOT were bombarded with calls about retirement benefits and salary issues. The DOT wanted access to information about their employees, but the query on the host application produced a list of every public employee in the state. The Host Publisher solution designed for the DOT improved the quality of the agency's service by making sure its information resources and technology were utilized in a secure, efficient, and cost-effective manner. Today, the DOT's personnel department can view the information from their desktops and can usually answer workers' questions immediately.

Providing High-Quality, Efficient Service
With Host Publisher, the Department of State Treasurer has been able to extend greater information access to other state agencies while maintaining confidence that no one can view or change data on the system without the proper authorization. The host system can be used by several different agencies, but each agency can access only the data about its own employees.

Using a modem connection, BB&T had limited access to the host system, and bank employees had to call the treasurer's office to get information about eligibility and benefits. This was a very time-consuming process, because managing the retirement accounts for several thousand state workers meant that bank employees had to process approximately 800 withdrawal applications each month.

To improve customer service, BB&T needed a solution that would increase employee productivity without requiring additional software installation, user training, or excessive maintenance. Using IBM technologies, bank employees now have Internet access to the Department of State Treasurer's host system—enabling them to readily view records of employees participating in BB&T's 401(k) plan.

According to Piner, the main appeal of the Host Publisher and Host On-Demand solution has been simplicity and flexibility. He states, "The Host Integration Solution has made my job much easier"— not to mention the jobs of bank employees and all the state workers.

For more information
Visit www.ibm.com/software/network/hostintegration.