branch fulfi llment services case study: mississippi ...€¦ · 3m™ branch fulfi llment...
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3M™ Branch Fulfi llment Services Case Study:Mississippi Department of RevenueBackground
The Mississippi Department of Revenue (DOR) supports county offi ces that administer millions of vehicle registration transactions each year. These occur at 104 county offi ce locations serving the public in 82 counties. A vehicle registration document with one or more secure validation decals is issued for each transaction and decals are applied to the vehicle license plate. Revenue collected from vehicle registrations in Mississippi totals over three hundred million dollars annually. This revenue is critical for maintaining both state and county operations and public services. In 2010, the DOR determined that their ineffi cient, manual process represented an opportunity for signifi cant savings and customer service improvements.
The ChallengeAll vehicle registration decals in Mississippi used to be digitally printed at the
DOR central offi ce and shipped out to all the county offi ces. Printing millions
of decals, packing, and shipping them kept one person occupied most of the
time. This approach to the vehicle registration and renewal process presented
numerous challenges for the DOR:
Inventory management and auditing
Time savings
Fraud prevention
Customer service
Waste prevention
Dianne Perry says that, because the processes for issuing and inventorying
stickers were manual and labor-intensive, “We spent hours and hours working
with counties every month trying to reconcile their books of decals.”
(Continued on page 2)
“With the previous manual and labor-intensive process, we spent hours and hours working with counties every month trying to reconcile their books of decals.”
Dianne PerryBranch Director IIMotor Vehicle Division, Mississippi Department of Revenue
An Automated SolutionIn 2010 the Mississippi DOR solicited proposals for a print-on-demand
registration renewal solution including automated auditing and inventory
management. A contract was ultimately awarded to 3M for Branch
Fulfi llment Services (BFS): A solution for managing all materials,
equipment, software and printing registration forms with integrated decals
on demand at county offi ce locations throughout the state.
3M partners with Intellectual
Technologies, Inc. (ITI) to
provide BFS in Mississippi.
The BFS solution provides:
Validation forms with decals
printed at time of sale
Automated audit systems
Elimination of pre-printed
decal inventory
Enhanced security and fraud
prevention
This specialized service solution includes all of the necessary hardware,
software, consumables, inventory management, training, and ongoing
maintenance. The DOR pays only for successfully produced registrations.
Time Savings, Inventory Management, and AuditingBFS saves time for the DOR and county offi ces by handling the entire
registration form and validation decal supply chain including production,
packaging, shipping and tracking, inventory management, and auditing.
The State is no longer burdened
with ordering, shipping, or
tracking forms and decals.
The information is printed
directly to the blank forms
and decals, on-demand
Printers and matched
components are supplied
as needed
The solution database tracks
the issuance of decals and
automatically deducts from the inventory
Complete activity reporting is available through a provided intranet site
Mississippi DOR’s BFS Intranet site
Thermal-transfer printer with POD form
The Challenge (Continued from page 1)
These complications made safeguarding
all the inventory and revenue for
millions of manual transactions across
so many locations impossible to get
exactly right, and made it harder to live
up to the DOR’s dedication to good
customer service.
Fraud prevention was a particular
concern for the DOR. Auditing
requirements made it clear that an
alternative to having rolls and rolls of
printed decals at the county offi ces had
to be identifi ed. There was a concern
about lost sticker inventory and possible
embezzlement. It was impossible to
know how much was being lost, but they
knew it was a big problem. For example,
sometimes when a box of decals was
shipped to a county offi ce, the offi ce
would report that they never received
it. “They might have been stolen, or just
misplaced. There was no way to know,”
Barbara Ford, Director, Motor Vehicle
Licensing, Mississippi Department of
Revenue, explains.
When decals were issued to motorists,
there was no way to know in Mississippi
what type of vehicle the decal was really
going to. “Not knowing whether it’s
going onto a luxury car or an old beater
leads to a loss of revenue. It cost us a lot
of money,” Ms. Ford says, referring to
Mississippi’s ad valorem tax.
Preprinted stickers represent millions of dollars in inventory value that needs to be accounted for accurately.
Fraud Prevention The Branch Fulfi llment System helps prevent fraud from many angles:
Tight control of materials in the supply chain and real-time monitoring of every transaction signifi cantly reduces
internal fraud.
Customized electronic reports allow the DOR to access information about the status of any printer, print job, or
transaction on a real-time basis.
Blank decals are extremely diffi cult to print without the full matched-component solution 3M provides, eliminating the
temptation for would-be thieves to take unused stock.
With BFS the vehicle license plate number is printed on the validation sticker, making it still harder to fraudulently
obtain decals or transfer them between vehicles.
“Getting the county offi ces and cashiers to acclimate to change is the challenge. But once they get going with it, they love it, love it, love it!”
Barbara FordDirector, Motor Vehicle LicensingMississippi Department of Revenue
Exceptional Results with Improved Customer Service3M now manages forms and sticker inventory for Mississippi, distributing blank
forms with decals directly to the county offi ces. Because 3M only charges
the DOR for successful transactions, there is no waste at the end of the year,
resulting in inventory control savings, customer service improvements with faster
transaction times and reduced wait times for motorists, and reduced fraud for the
county offi ces and DOR.
With regard to fraud control, BFS real-time auditing capability allows the county
offi ce managers and DOR to closely monitor reprints. Reprints can be locked
down so that cashiers have to get permission to run them. Also, because now
each sticker is printed for a specifi c vehicle with the license plate number printed
on it, there is no chance of lost revenue from not knowing the value of the car
that the sticker goes onto.
“The problems have been solved,” Barbara Ford says. “There are no pre-printed
stickers in the county offi ces. No worries about locking up stickers. If someone
steals the blank form, they can’t do anything with that, unless they can steal all
the software & systems too, and I don’t think anyone is going to do that. We
have a lot more real-time information than we used to.”
Mississippi POD Vehicle Registration Renewal form with integrated secure decal
Traffi c Safety Systems3M Center, Building 235-3A-09St. Paul, MN 55144-1000U.S.A.1-800-553-1380 (U.S. Only)www.3M.com/tss
The county offi ce workers also appreciate that with BFS the decal is integrated with
the form. The sticker and form used to be separate and stapled by the cashier at the
county offi ce. This required more process steps and was another opportunity for
something to go wrong. “Sometimes the stickers would be dropped and they might
stick to things like the bottom of a shoe, and then if the sticker was misplaced the
cashier would just take another one—it led to big inventory headaches. But there’s
no room for error when it’s on the form already,” Dianne Perry explains.
Another money-saver for Mississippi has been the system’s fl exibility in reporting
and auditing. Mississippi used to have two hard copies of all receipts, but now the
counties can decide for themselves if they still want to do that. Ms. Ford says, “Most
have chosen not to, which saves money, too.”
“They have been wonderful. There were not any problems. They made themselves available within a few minutes whenever we called.”
Said Ms. Ford of 3M and ITI’s project management and technical service
For further information about the 3M Branch Fulfi llment Services solution provided in Mississippi, please contact Barbara Ford: Barbara.ford@dor.ms.gov
To contact your 3M Government Services Manager visit us at www.3M.com/tss.
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