North Carolina Town Pilots Virtual Fire Inspection During COVID-19 with Box
Cary, North Carolina, like so many municipalities throughout the U.S., is currently under a stay-at-home order. A thriving tech-centric community of over 170,000 residents, Cary sits in the heart of the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. Upon the rise of COVID-19, Cary didn’t miss a beat. Having already standardized project management activities on Salesforce, the transition to remote work was seamless.
Scott Porter, VP of Business Development at Box shares that work-from-home initiatives can make it difficult for teams to collaborate in an organized way. Box was focused on helping businesses shift to remote work amid COVID-19, and worked with leaders in Cary, NC to do just that. Box is helping customers mobilize during this period of business transformation.
What is the main challenge that leaders are seeing due to COVID-19?
Scott Porter: Supporting remote work is now imperative for all leaders. They have to help 100% of their organization be fully operational no matter where their employees are located, while providing uninterrupted service that can be ramped quickly. In addition, many enterprises rely on legacy VPN or file servers to access information, and that doesn’t provide enterprise-grade security.
How does your solution help solve this challenge?
Porter: Since day one Box has supported mobile and remote work, providing users with a single cloud platform, with real-time collaboration, available from anywhere on any device. Users can securely share with anyone inside and outside the enterprise, work in Salesforce, and connect to Slack, Zoom, DocuSign, G-Suite, and more.
Cary’s Salesforce instance hosts the municipality’s 2,600+ project and service initiatives. This includes facilities, parks, water, streets, transportation, economic development, general planning, and more. Since the onset of COVID-19, Cary has seen 100% adoption of Box by users and a 12% increase in engagement.
Cary leverages the Box for Salesforce solution to facilitate these workflows as well as manage employee access to all resources such as staff reports, RFPs, bids, contracts, architectural drawings, maps, video and more. By leveraging this solution, employees can search for, securely access, and share content across devices from anywhere.
Box for Salesforce is one of our most strategic integrations. It centralizes sales, marketing and other content in Box while ensuring the content remains available for easy and secure collaboration directly from within Salesforce records. Users can access and share files such as contracts, proposals, collateral, and more without ever having to leave Salesforce. That means sales and external-facing teams can close deals faster and drive superior customer engagement, regardless of where they are.
What impact has your solution had so far?
Porter: Box’s integration with Salesforce has resulted in a superior user experience by providing the native Box folder and file structure directly within a variety of Salesforce record types, bringing new levels of sophistication, security, and technology fluency to Cary’s workforce.
To support citizens during the stay-at-home order, Cary transitioned their 311 center to be fully remote with this solution supporting their workflows. Cary311 enables citizens to connect with any non-emergency department to report a missed curbside collection, ask questions about their utility bill, and more. Additionally, the Cary Emergency Operations Center is leveraging the solution for critical planning and decision-making during this challenging time. A specialized COVID-19 emergency management dashboard was created in Salesforce and related research and news articles stored in Box are tied to records for easy search and accelerated collaboration. This enabled the discovery of an iOS COVID-19 Screening Tool app that was subsequently pushed to all field employee mobile devices.
The Cary Fire Department successfully piloted a virtual fire inspection program initially targeted for foster home visits. Foster parents use a new mobile app to upload pictures of required smoke alarms and other safety features using geolocation to verify their address. The initial submission of these photos allows fire inspectors to be proactive by informing owners of any necessary changes needed ahead of time. During the virtual visit, Fire Department staff follow along the tour by watching on a large monitor where they can see and hear everything and can confirm items are present and working properly. After the inspection, forms are routed through DocuSign to sign-off on the inspection. Rich media and documents are stored in Box and tied to Salesforce records ensuring universal access to the information. This innovative process increases the family’s comfort by eliminating the need for outsiders to enter their home. The Fire Department is thrilled to have adapted to current circumstances and continuing to offer this critical service. Box for Salesforce has fundamentally transformed Cary’s project-based content processes and citizen engagement.
How else has Box helped customers during this time of change?
Porter: When the COVID-19 pandemic first hit the U.S., we launched several initiatives to help our customers pivot to remote work. A few of the early steps we took include:
● Offering small business customers a 3 month free trial of Box Business with unlimited storage
● Donating free 12-month Box licenses (up to $1,000,000) for California school districts to enable administrators and teachers to collaborate
● Providing free administrator and end user training courses for new and existing Box customers
● Sharing tips and tricks to simplify collaboration
● Launching free remote consultations to help customers with their remote work strategies
Learn more about Box’s solution on AppExchange and see what other solutions are available to support digital transformation on AppExchange COVID-19 Resources for Business.
