Serving one’s country is one of the noblest if by definition one of the most fateful of callings.

When one’s nation is under attack finding recruits is rarely difficult. When the threat is a little further away than their back yard finding personnel willing to take arms and to pay the ultimately price that comes with bearing them becomes more challenging.

The U.S. Army has typically had more difficulty recruiting in urban areas where entry level jobs and educational choices are more plentiful. At the same time one of the longstanding issues with military recruitment is that information about being ‘in the service’ has been verbal: from recruiters and from family and friends those who have served: which may be heaven, hell or somewhere in between.  Yet the nature of military service is such that it is difficult for potential recruits to really sense for themselves what it would be like to don the uniforms.

Another challenge faced by the Army has been in the capturing and tracking potential recruits. The Army’s existing first-generation recruiting IT system had done little to capture marketing metrics for analysis. Army recruiting has historically been a labor-intensive process that has not capitalized on the full potential of emerging technologies to communicate the value of Army service.

New technology now permits a counterattack. The Army decided to test out a new recruiting center called the Army Experience Center, or “AEC.” The AEC educates the public and secures new recruits by letting them find out for themselves in an environment populated with online gaming stations, high-tech simulators, and interactive exhibits. The center uses virtual technologies to allow prospects to experience Army life in an immersive virtual environment and offers Web 2.0 systems to create a virtual community of influence around the Army.

The Army has never shied from tackling challenging obstacles. The Philadelphia, Pa-area has been a particularly difficult area for recruitment. So the Army launched the AEC program in fall 2008 at the Franklin Mills Mall located there. The facility allows prospective recruits to undergo simulated experiences of an Army soldier in a casual and non-threatening environment.  The AEC sits in a retail center of 14,500 square feet filled with video games and three full-scale simulators, including an AH-64 Apache Longbow helicopter, an armed Humvee and a Black Hawk helicopter.   For those who want to take the experience deeper, the center has 22 recruiters.

Additionally, the Army also decided to march forward with an advanced recruitment tracking platform. To achieve their goal of launching this center on time and within budget, the Army selected CRM sales software, CRM cloud computing and customer service software provider, Salesfore.com as the recruitment tracking platform for potential enlistees for this initial center launch. Salesforce.com’s (News - Alert) hosted CRM solution gave it a flexible and extendable recruitment tracking system that afforded greater features than the legacy recruiting system. The system would require detailed specifications to track individuals based on their preferences and activities that appealed to them during their experience at the center.

The Army also chose Acumen Solutions as the system integrator to make the Salesforce.com app happen. Acumen Solutions customized Salesforce.com CRM to enable onsite registration to include photo capture, badge print, and game play tracking.  Army recruiters use Salesforce.com to manage which games receive the most play, send invitations to gaming tournaments, keep track of facilities usage, handling correspondence with the recruits and help recruiters focus on those visitors that have the highest propensity to join the Army.

Acumen Solutions also deployed Web 2.0 social networking through Facebook (News - Alert), integrated with Salesforce.com. Use of these technologies gives the Army a flexible, secure, and innovative platform from which to conduct recruiting and educational training.

This new program has revolutionized the Army’s recruiting model.  Using a fusion of Web 2.0 technologies, Army recruiters can quickly access a dashboard of pertinent information such as recruit demographics, enlistment pipelines and an individual’s propensity to serve in the armed services. The AEC uses 50 percent of the recruiter manpower compared to the traditional model.  Additionally, the recruiters are now able to interact with candidates in a casual, open environment that provides a more accurate view of life in the military and the careers available.

In most federal organizations this type of undertaking would consume five or more years to complete, according to Acumen Solutions yet the entire project and facility was up and running in less than a year. Despite the high tech presentation center, it is the recruiting information tracking system that underpins it that enables the Army to accomplish and exceed their recruiting goals.

As a result of the comprehensive tracking methods Acumen Solutions implemented within Salesforce.com, the Army saves time and resources by specifically concentrating only on those potential recruits most interested in an Army career path. Using Salesforce.com, recruiters can track each individual’s participation in specific AEC activities, which allows them to focus on those visitors who have the highest propensity to join the Army. At the same time the AEC replaces five smaller recruitment stations in the Philadelphia area, at about the same annual operating cost, not counting the initial expenses.

The Salesforce.com/Facebook-enabled AEC, put together by Acumen Solutions permitted the Army to meet another key goal with this new approach to recruiting: improving the image of the Army in those areas. The press coverage resulting from the Army Experience Center launch has been very positive and so innovative that it has been featured in numerous articles and recently covered on NBC Nightly News and CNN.