The Program
A large public-sector department responsible for weatherization program administration had an immense undertaking managing the program, ensuring that local service providers were servicing the eligible addresses in the required timeframe. They needed a system to support address lookup, address confirmation, and address validation.
The Challenge
The use of legacy systems resulted in duplicate address confirmations and manual oversight, impacting the department’s effectiveness in managing the weatherization program and coordination with local service providers to support constituents. Challenges included:
- Manual oversight by department staff
- Disconnected systems for local service providers confirming addresses for weatherization
- Duplicate address confirmations
The burden of managing the program in the legacy system fell on the department staff. They needed a system that would allow for real-time address confirmation, an Application Programming Interface (API) with the capability to interact with third-party vendors that local service providers use to confirm addresses for weatherization, and the elimination of duplicate confirmations.
Propoint’s Approach
Propoint provided end-to-end implementation services including design, development, testing, and support. To help the department streamline the process with local service providers reserving addresses for weatherization, the Propoint team built the address confirmation system solution on the Salesforce platform. Propoint analyzed the functional and non-functional requirements to ensure that the system would have important checks when service providers tried to confirm an address for weatherization, therefore eliminating duplicate confirmations.
Key Capabilities Delivered
The department pain points were addressed in the Salesforce implementation by including these key capabilities:
- Address Lookup – Local service providers can look up addresses to see if they have been weatherized in the past or qualify for weatherization
- The system will return results and show which addresses have received federal funding to weatherize within the last 15 years
- Eliminate Duplicate Results – If a duplicate is found, the system will return an error message and not allow confirmation
- Real-Time Confirmation – Address confirmation is scheduled in real-time for weatherization. Confirming an address will prevent multiple local service providers from weatherizing the same dwelling when they service an overlapping territory
- Address Input – Local service providers can add an address that does not currently exist in the system
The address confirmation system uses four different API interfaces: address search, dwelling confirmation process, aging report, and add an address to streamline the process of reserving addresses to weatherize homes.
These APIs call from the third-party applications and interact with the MuleSoft API in real-time, thereby confirming an address for a local service provider and eliminating duplicate confirmations. When the weatherization work is completed, expense reports are submitted to the legacy system including their dwelling confirmation number, allowing local service providers to be reimbursed for their weatherization work.
The Propoint team also provided technical oversight, working with internal and external stakeholders to solicit input and feedback, identify technical issues, and coordinate with the project team to mitigate or resolve technical issues. The team conducted functional, unit, system/integration, and regression testing on the address confirmation system to ensure functionality. Documentation was developed for the third-party application vendors for their API implementation, as well as for the department staff to facilitate a smooth knowledge transfer from the Propoint team.
Business Impact
The system has produced tangible business benefits for the department, including:
- Ease of integration with third-party vendor applications
- Ability to confirm addresses for weatherization in real-time
- Validations for confirming addresses for weatherization services
Why It Matters
An end-to-end solution is integral to the department’s efficient work with local service providers to support eligible residents in weatherizing their homes and reducing utility costs.
About Propoint Technology, Inc.
Since 2005, Propoint has proudly delivered a full suite of information technology (IT) and management consulting services to a wide array of State of California departments and programs. We provide services that are tailored to individual client needs. Our philosophy is to listen first, ask the right questions, and then “get to the point” – providing our customers with the relevant and timely direction needed to reach core business objectives.
For more information:
Propoint Technology, Inc.
