U.S. Health & Human Services Goes Salesforce for $100M CRM Upgrade

The Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) recently announced an agency-wide $100 million Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) for Salesforce subscriptions. The agreement will allow HHS operating staff and personnel in other divisions to purchase Salesforce products and services through a central purchasing vehicle.

The agency said the agreement will help streamline CRM (customer relationship management) software purchasing decisions throughout the department.

“Driven by the use of mobile, social and cloud technologies in their day-to-day lives, citizens are putting pressure on government agencies to modernize the way they interact and communicate with their constituents,” said Dave Rey, EVP, public sector at Salesforce, in a statement announcing the deal last month. “By establishing this BPA, HHS is taking a big leap forward by increasing government transparency and engagement so that its agencies can focus on what matters most — the health and well-being of Americans.”

Leveraging Government Buying Power

Prior to last month’s purchasing agreement, the HHS lacked a single platform for making agency-wide purchases of Salesforce subscriptions, despite high demand for the company’s CRM solutions across a number of divisions within the HHS.

The department said the agreement will now allow it to take advantage of the economies of scale inherent in the volume of business it does with Salesforce. It will also allow the department to finally leverage its buying power to drive down purchasing costs, making Salesforce products more accessible to HHS staff members and more cost-efficient to use.

In addition to the cost savings and more efficient purchasing decisions, Salesforce said the agreement will also provide HHS staff with additional CRM services to support its mission of protecting and enhancing the health of U.S. citizens. HHS staffers will now be able to receive real-time updates and information from other government agencies with which they work closely, such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

$500M for Salesforce Implementation

The deal should also help HHS coordinate with other agencies, such as the Administration for Children & Families, to develop strategic government initiatives that may require input and guidance from multiple departments. In addition, HHS divisions can quickly and easily build new cloud applications, making data accessible to employees anywhere and on any device.

But the HHS isn’t the only federal agency that will be investing in CRM infrastructure. The General Services Administration (GSA), the government agency responsible for providing management support to all federal agencies, awarded a $503 million BPA for Salesforce implementation, integration and support services for all federal government departments that are eligible to order from the GSA program.

That agreement, which was announced in December, should help consolidate the federal government’s Salesforce technical development, operations and maintenance, and implementation strategy requirements into one procurement vehicle that can replace numerous agency-specific contracts, reducing both contract duplication and the government’s administration costs. The five-year contract will also include implementation work from Salesforce-certified partners such as Accenture, Capgemini, and Deloitte.

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