When government (local, regional, federal or national) provides public sector services for its citizens, they should have a responsibility to provide them in a professional, timely manner. That’s not an easily scalable activity when dealing with thousands of citizen cases, often with limited resources. However the aim is to deliver consistently positive experiences to your citizens or constituents. And using external providers who may be better resourced or with a more rationalized core competency in this area can be beneficial to all involved. In my consulting for regional government, I find that they actually work even harder than federal government to find ways to engage their constituents, given how important the revenue stream is for them to be prosperous. Therefore a cloud-based CRM system is an excellent fit for a resource constrained yet innovative regional public service authority.

Which is why I was pleased to see that IBM announced Friday that they had acquired Optevia, a privately owned Software as a service (SaaS) systems integrator specializing in Microsoft Dynamics CRM solutions for public sector organizations. Optevia will join IBM Global Business Services and help meet the increasing client demand for CRM SaaS solutions within the public sector. Optevia’s main focus on UK health, housing, and emergency services, along with their role in both local and central government service provisioning, puts their services smack in the centre of the citizen’s world. Building solutions based on a foundation of Microsoft Dynamics CRM, Optevia has worked with governments from the local to central level, public service agencies, and more.

The acquisition of a Microsoft Dynamics CRM integrator highlights that IBM is interested in industry sector solutions, and is not adverse to that solution being based on another SaaS platform.

Why this is valuable for both IBM and Optevia is:

• For IBM: IBM gains Optevia’s expertise, experience, and agility in the public sector CRM SaaS space, plus the benefit of their wide-ranging existing client relationships.
• For Optevia:   Optevia gains access to IBM’s technical skills plus its reach and range, as IBM said that the Optevia solutions will be scaled across other areas worldwide.

Details of the acquisition were not disclosed. Optevia was founded in 2001.