A transformative platform solution for a major Texas regulator

Challenge 

As the oldest regulatory agency in the Lone Star State, the Railroad Commission of Texas no longer oversees railroads (the Texas Department of Transportation now handles that), but the Commission does have jurisdiction over much of the state’s oil and gas industry as well as certain mining activities.  

The Commission’s Surface Mining and Reclamation Division (SMRD) is responsible for regulating surface coal and uranium mining and overseeing reclamation requirements statewide. The SMRD’s responsibilities include permitting, inspections, compliance tracking, bond releases, and managing violations, complaints, and enforcement. These responsibilities require close coordination across multiple internal roles and structured interaction with industry applicants and other external stakeholders. 

In recent years as regulatory demand increased, the SMRD continued to rely on poorly connected legacy systems that limited visibility into workloads and review status. Staff coordinated work across manual, paper‑based, and spreadsheet‑driven processes, increasing administrative effort and operational risk. Agency leadership lacked a centralized, auditable view of regulatory activity—impeding teams’ ability to monitor statutory timelines, assess performance against fiscal‑year goals, and maintain consistent inspection oversight. 

To overcome these challenges, the SMRD partnered with Guidehouse to modernize operations while maintaining regulatory rigor and auditability. 

Approach 

We developed a comprehensive modernization plan that leveraged Salesforce as a unified cloud solution to digitize end‑to‑end SMRD workflows. Standard and custom Salesforce objects—the database tables that store client records—were configured to support regulatory entities and processes.  

Our implementation plan ensured that the platform would support SMRD staff members across inspection review and coordination functions as well as external users. The plan also called for implementing analytics and reporting capabilities to support operational oversight so that leadership teams could more effectively monitor workloads, track performance, and assess outcomes against defined goals. 

To ensure smooth adoption, we took a phased approach to deployment by scheduling a series of separate production releases—each covering initial go‑live and remediation—supported by actions to bolster long-term sustainability. 

Impact 

By consolidating individual workflows into a single platform, the solution established a centralized, auditable system of record for SMRD activities. Replacing fragmented tools helped improve operational consistency, reduce manual coordination, and strengthen regulatory oversight across functions. Key implementation outcomes included: 

• 55 internal SMRD users supported 
• 9 internal user roles supported across SMRD functions 
• 200 external users enabled through Salesforce Experience Cloud 
• 45 custom and standard Salesforce objects configured 
• 31 Salesforce Flows and declarative automations implemented, supporting regulatory intake, review, notifications, and statutory tracking 
• 29 analytics assets delivered, including dashboards and reports for operational oversight and decision‑making 
• 12 sustainment artifacts delivered to support long‑term operations, maintenance, and knowledge transfer 

The platform now enables SMRD leadership to monitor performance against fiscal‑year goals and statutory review timelines through goal‑based dashboards, automated transaction logging, and statutory clock enforcement—improving transparency, accountability, and confidence in regulatory decision‑making.  

Overall, the Salesforce-driven modernization effort has helped SMRD reinforce governance, reduce operational risk, and provide a durable foundation to carry out its critical regulatory responsibilities in a high‑volume, compliance‑driven environment.