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Case Study: Arizona Department of Transportation
Motor Vehicle Division Fuel Supplier Management System
Synopsis: Synapse Studios built a streamlined, web-based application to eliminate a series of bottlenecks occurring in the MVDs internal systems.
The Problem
The Arizona MVD maintains a list of Fuel Suppliers subject to the state's Fuel taxes. These taxes are tracked per county and the Fuel Suppliers list includes detailed contact information for each supplier and additional details. The system as it existed was built in an aging and bloated Microsoft Access database. The agency sought to accomplish several objectives:
- Migrate all existing Supplier data from the existing database to a more robust and scalable system
- Eliminate the need to use the worrisome "Compact & Repair" option in Access to "fix" data corruption and integrity issues
- Significantly reduce the amount of time required for agency personnel to contact all listed suppliers in the event of a change in any of the data by automating the process.
(Agency personnel were required to contact by phone more than 150 suppliers every time a change was made to the database in order to ensure consistency of the data across the board) - Allow Fuel Suppliers to update their list information securely through the web without having to contact agency personnel or mail or fax any changes
- Allow multiple users to access the system simultaneously
- Allow Fuel Suppliers to track changes of information of other Suppliers
The Solution
Synapse Studios was contracted by the state agency in 2004 to build a web-based system to manage their Fuel Supplier list. The new system was built with the following features and considerations:
- The system was built in PHP with a MySQL database backend
- All existing Access-based data was imported into the system
- Agency personnel were able to input remaining mail-in detail changes into a convenient and consistent web-based form, rather than into the Access application
- Fuel Suppliers were provided with a secure user name and password with which they could access the application from any web browser
- Suppliers were thus granted the ability to edit their information without agency intervention. Further, Suppliers could easily view all recently made changes
- Suppliers were automatically notified via email when another supplier's information changed. These emails included the (non-sensitive) detail changes within the email, further streamlining the process
- Any remaining suppliers without configured email accounts were listed to agency personnel who were able to mark them as notified by phone
- Suppliers were given the ability to export all relevant information in Comma Separated Value (CSV) format, allowing them to synchronize changes with their local address systems
The Results
The solution provided by Synapse Studios provided significant cost savings. In addition to cost savings, the implemented solution:
- Eliminated a great deal of paper waste and data entry time as Supplier users could now submit their reports through the web interface
- Reduced the amount of agency personnel time spent over the course of a year maintaining the list and updating suppliers by phone, saving the agency over $35,000/year and allowing said personnel to be re-tasked to other priorities
- Dramatically reduced the number of errors in the Supplier List by allowing users to validate their information, significantly reducing the number of paper/fax-based changes and by providing instant feedback to Suppliers
- Minimized the amount of active, recurring maintenance required on the tool, reducing support costs
