Get Started with Case Management for Benefits
Learning Objectives
After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:
- Describe the common challenges that applicants and issuing agencies face with benefits.
- Explain how Benefit Management streamlines processes associated with financial benefits.
- Summarize Benefit Management features.
- Identify the steps for configuring Benefit Management in an org.
Before You Start
Before you start this module, make sure you complete the following content. The work you do here builds on the concepts and work you do in that content.
Also, consider completing the following recommended content.
Government Assistance
Can you imagine a world without social services? The big blue marble would be a far different planet. Government assistance is the steady heartbeat of economic and community stability. It includes all the quiet forces that help individuals and families meet basic needs, including programs and services that enhance their wellbeing and quality of life.
Government agencies support communities by establishing programs and granting benefits.
- A benefit is a specific type of aid, such as monetary support, housing assistance, training, or counseling. A benefit may be used across different programs.
- A program includes a set of benefits and services that help constituents reach their objectives, for example, securing employment or dealing with substance abuse. Programs help a group of vulnerable constituents accomplish a societal goal.
Governments use programs and benefits to address all kinds of issues that constituents face, helping them avoid difficult situations and become self-sufficient.
Social services usually target specific areas of need in the community. Underpinning the services, related policies govern things like benefit eligibility, assignment, and disbursement to ensure the proper use of funds.
The Constituent Experience
Constituents who seek benefits typically have to apply to the supporting agency with proof that they meet specific criteria. Agencies review each applicant’s documentation, compare the submitted information against the benefit requirements, and then determine eligibility and the amount of aid to disburse. These checks make sure that agencies use their resources wisely and follow the rules.
Unfortunately, the systems and tools that governments use to process requests and roll out benefits often lack the level of customer service that constituents expect in our digital-first world. Applicants encounter lengthy, paper-based applications, delayed reviews due to large agency workloads, and little transparency into decisions about eligibility and awarded aid amounts. Because benefits are so crucial to our communities, constituents need a modern, expedient, and transparent way to apply for benefits.
Benefit Management with Public Sector Solutions
Benefit Management in Public Sector Solutions brings government assistance programs into a brand-new era. The collaborative tools, connected data sources, intelligent forms, and automation work together to increase collaboration, trust, and efficiency across all your agency processes. With Benefit Management, you can streamline benefit-application, review, assignment, and disbursement workflows. This way, you can deliver timely and targeted assistance to your community members who need it most.
Best of all, Benefit Management comes with several prebuilt templates, including Omniscript assessment forms and Experience Cloud templates. You can configure, reuse, and extend these out-of-the-box sample components to swiftly and efficiently roll out a comprehensive digital solution for your agency. For example, use a sample Omniscript template to speed up the creation of application forms.
In this module, you learn how to set up and use Benefit Management to transform your agency processes and better serve your constituents.
This module focuses on Benefit Management tools and workflows that support benefit applications and eligibility reviews.
To learn about managing benefits and services and other Case Management capabilities, visit the Social Program Management Data Model in Public Sector Solutions module on Trailhead.
Take a moment to review the key features included out of the box with Benefit Management.
To learn about the objects that power Benefit Management, view the Benefit Management Data Model in Public Sector Solutions module in Trailhead.
Benefit Management Setup
Setting up Benefit Management starts with benefit and program creation and finishes up with preparing the constituent benefits portal. Because Benefit Management is built with adaptivity in mind, you need to do a bit of configuration to align the system and workflows to suit your agency and constituents.
This diagram shows the main setup steps.
Here’s a rundown of the steps covered in this module.
- Create benefits and programs.
- Set up application intake.
- Configure eligibility calculations.
- Set up benefit review.
- Configure the benefits portal.
In the next unit, you start setting up your agency org by creating benefits, programs, and benefit applications.