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.