New South Wales Rural Fire Service

Posted: 18.02.09  |  Created by: Do Something

At a glance

• the New South Wales Rural Fire Service in South Eastern Australia is the world's largest fire service, with approximately 70,000 volunteer firefighter members
• every month RFS' Sydney Head Office procurement department manages more than 1,500 requests from more than 2,200 rural fire brigades for items
• with the help of Adobe Solutions Partner Indigo Pacific, NSW RFS developed and installed an online, forms-based procurement system
• this form is automatically integrated with back-end systems, such as SunSystems Financials, and with an extensive procurement database
• results include faster processing times in procurement requisitions, huge cost savings in paper, printing, postage and staffing, and a reduction in environmental impact of paper-based procurement process.

Company Profile

The New South Wales Rural Fire Service (NSW RFS) in South Eastern Australia is the word's largest fire service, with approximately 70,000 volunteer firefighter members. It provides emergency services to more than 90% of New South Wales.

The challenge

Every month RFS' Sydney Head Office procurement department manages more than 1,500 requests from more than 2,200 rural fire brigades for items that range from fire engines to paper clips. Challenges included the need to:

• automate administrative tasks such as collating and managing thousands of paper forms, sending acknowledgement forms, ensuring budget holders are entitled to make requests, managing purchasing orders and ensuring appropriate support documents are completed

• find a solution that could interact with NSW RFS databases and applications such as SunSystem Financials, a Microsoft Access database, and the CHRIS Payroll System amongst others.

'Paper-Less' strategy

NSW RFS worked with Indigo Pacific, an Adobe Solutions Partner, to deploy Adobe document process management and forms creation solutions to increase the speed with which procurement requests can be fulfilled for rural firefighters and support staff. The solution enabled seamless interaction with back-end financial systems and databases.

'Paper-Less' solution

The solution was built using the Adobe Form Server, an intelligent data capture product that creates and publishes Adobe PDF forms via web browsers. By selecting a web-based form product, NSW RFS was able to provide an instant requisition facility to its more than 70,000 firefighters across the state.

Indigo Pacific used Adobe Form Designer to develop an online XML-based form that:

• resembled its paper-based predecessor
• automatically integrated with back-end systems such as SunSystems Financials to determine budget approval during the requisition
• provided almost instantaneous acknowledgement.

It is also integrated with an extensive procurement database to provide information on more than 15,000 products from more than 25,000 suppliers. 

When staff submit their forms, Adobe Workflow Server creates an authorisation and routes the form to managers for sign-off.

After sign off, approved documents are saved instantly to SunSystems Financials. Next, Adobe Central Pro Output Server takes the output from SunSystems, and generates a purchase order template using data from NSW RFS' customer relationship management (CRM) system.

This is sent to suppliers by email, fax, or letter as appropriate. A trackable Adobe PDF document of the request is saved for reference purposes.

'Paper-Less' results

• faster procurement turnaround times
• automation of administrative tasks led to greater efficiencies, eg, the problems of illegible handwriting on forms and errors by employees re-keying data from paper forms in back-end systems are eliminated
• request validation is sped up and errors further eliminated by additional information built into the electronic forms
• improved integration between databases and applications
• significant costs savings in paper, printing, postage and staffing
• environmental impact of the paper-based procurement process reduced.

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