Municipal governments often juggle multiple, large-scale projects that require coordination across various departments, vendors, and stakeholders. Ensuring that these projects stay on track, meet deadlines, and maintain transparency is crucial for delivering public services efficiently.

Here’s a brief overview of how to use Salesforce to track and manage municipal projects effectively.

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Centralized Project Management

Salesforce allows municipal governments to create custom project records, which act as centralized hubs for all project-related data. Each record contains key details such as deadlines, budget allocations, assigned departments, and project milestones.

• How to Use: Set up a custom object for projects within Salesforce, and add relevant fields like project milestones, start/end dates, and responsible departments. All stakeholders can access this single source of truth, ensuring that everyone is on the same page.

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Tracking Milestones and Deadlines

Project milestones—such as approvals, construction phases, or budget reviews—can be tracked using Salesforce’s task and milestone tracking features. This ensures projects progress according to plan and that deadlines are met.

• How to Use: Add milestone fields in project records to define key phases. Use task management to assign specific tasks to departments and set due dates aligned with project milestones. Enable automated reminders to notify teams when a deadline is approaching or missed.

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Automating Workflow

Salesforce’s automation tools, like Flow and Process Builder, help streamline project management by automating routine tasks, such as assigning tasks to the next team once a milestone is completed or sending deadline reminders to team leads.

• How to Use: Set up workflows to automate the progression of tasks and send notifications when milestones are completed or deadlines are approaching. This reduces manual handoffs and ensures projects move forward efficiently.

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Visualizing Progress with Dashboards

Salesforce’s reporting and dashboard tools provide visual insights into project progress, showing which milestones have been completed, which tasks are pending, and whether the project is on budget and schedule.

• How to Use: Create custom dashboards that visualize real-time project data. Use reports to track key metrics like milestone completion rates and budget utilization, and share these dashboards with relevant teams to ensure transparency.

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Ensuring Accountability and Transparency

Salesforce automatically tracks all project updates and changes, providing a clear audit trail of who made changes and when. This is especially important for municipal governments, where public accountability is essential.

• How to Use: Enable Field History Tracking on key project fields like deadlines and budget changes to monitor and document every adjustment made to the project. This ensures transparency and helps resolve any issues related to delays or budget overages.

Orchid Connect is a woman-owned Salesforce implementation firm with 30 years of experience serving associations, non-profits and small/medium businesses. We specialize in strategic and implementation services, go-to-market support, and ongoing support. To learn more, reach us at reachout@orchidconnect.com.