Motorola sells CRM software, too

It's not what one usually thinks of when they think of Motorola Inc., but the Schaumburg, Ill., communications company today said that Destin, Fla., had agreed to use its customer relationship management solution. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Destin becomes the third ? albeit the smallest ? Florida community to adopt Motorola's Customer Service Request system for handling citizen service. Miami-Dade County and Miami both use the system.

"With this system, we will be able to manage citizen requests around the clock," said Greg Kisela, Destin city manager. "We want to make the city easier to do business with."

Destin will start using the Motorola system to handle project approvals and speed up the review of building permits and licenses. Kisela said businesses will be able to check their project status and request information at the city's Web site. In the future, Destin will use the system for other city services.

Destin will use the Customer Service Request system in an application service provider model where the software actually resides in Motorola's Schaumburg data center. Motorola also sells the software for local governments to deploy on their servers, but offering it as service makes the product more accessible to smaller communities.

"[Destin] is leading the way by showing similar sized communities that such a system is beneficial for cities of all sizes, not just the larger cities that are currently using CSR as part of their 3-1-1 systems," said Steve Reed, vice president and general manager of public service solutions at Motorola Communications and Electronics Inc.

Motorola has also deployed its CRM software in Chicago, Dallas, Houston, San Jose, Calif., and other cities.

With 2003 prime federal IT revenues of $448 million, Motorola ranked No. 21 on Washington Technology's 2004 Top 100 list.