City of Fresno and RightFax

The Problem

The City of Fresno used standalone fax machines to distribute large volumes of contract bid documents. Administrative personnel spent two to three hours at a time standing at the fax machine. Confidential City documents were received on these same fax machines.

The Solution

RightFax fax server software provides the City of Fresno with the time savings, user productivity, and confidentiality needed to conduct business more efficiently.

Some of the Benefits:

 Compatible with leading ERP systems, like the City of Fresno's PeopleSoft ERP system.
Saves time and labor by faxing within e-mail applications--integrates with the City's Novell GroupWise system.
Automates the communication distribution process for added productivity and convenience.
Provides added security on high-level, confidential inbound documents.
The Challenge

Mid-way between San Francisco and Los Angeles, near Yosemite National Park, lies the city of Fresno—the sixth largest city in California with 400,000+ population. The City employs about 3,100 staff to handle everything from purchasing, and parks and recreation, to public utilities.

Like many modern metropolises, each of the City's many departments oversees an overwhelming number of specific and critical job tasks. Common to most departments is the need to distribute documents externally. Its purchasing department, for instance, relies on faxing technology to regularly send up-to-50 page contract bidding documents to existing and perspective suppliers. Because many of its suppliers do not have Internet access, they rely on fax communication.

Before RightFax, document faxing was a very manual process, which, on large single document jobs, involved administrative personnel standing alongside five fax machines for two to three hours at a time. "It killed productivity," says Raj Nagra, network systems specialist with the City, who estimates that the City faxes out an average 25,000 pages each month. "But that's just the way it was. Everyone accepted that."

The manual inbound fax system presented another significant shortcoming in that it was not the least bit confidential. High-level, sensitive documents could sit on the machine for hours, making them readily visible to employees—a major concern for the Mayor's Office as well as for Purchasing and Human Resources, which deal with classified information on a daily basis. "There was always the chance that if the intended recipient didn't immediately go to the machine to retrieve a fax, someone else might be looking at it," he adds.

The Solution

As part of its ERP implementation planning, the City hired an outside consultant who performed a user needs study and who investigated fax technology options. It was necessary for the fax technology to be compatible with PeopleSoft and Novell GroupWise (its internal office e-mail) platforms. Budget and user productivity requirements were also priorities.

Ultimately, the City of Fresno selected RightFax—the highly scalable, reliable, and adaptable product suite from AVT that combines industry-leading network, production, and IP fax for efficient electronic document delivery. It also installed a Windows NT server with fax boards plus a robust T1 high-speed Internet line with three fax lines.

Now the City has a total of 16 fax lines—four exclusively dedicated to inbound faxes and 12 that can handle both incoming and outgoing faxes, depending on traffic demand. Any given department or division can send up to 12 faxes and receive up to four, or receive up to 16 at once—compared to just one at a time. The increase in available lines has made all the difference in the world, according to Nagra.

All City employees with e-mail capabilities can instantly and easily fax by accessing RightFax on their workstations. Gone are the days of standing by the fax machine and manually feeding and retrieving every fax. Instead, employees can focus their attention on their core business tasks.

"When you're sending multiple-page documents to 1,000 people one at a time, it can take days," he says. "But with RightFax, we've narrowed the time span to minutes. That helps our employees meet their deadlines." Additionally, the Mayor's Office, Human Resources, and other departments, which deal with confidential data, now receive faxes discreetly on the PCs thanks to the RightFax Fax Authorization System. There's no need to worry about unauthorized access.

The City also takes advantage of RightFax Fax-On-Demand technology, which enables it to automatically respond to inbound requests for such documents as city permits, dog licenses, and tax exemption forms. "These processes are now automated. We're saving time and labor. And down the road, we expect it to become even more popular," Nagra says. The City's senior executives are already starting to use the RightFax Web Client feature, which enables them to retrieve faxes from the City's Web site "anytime, anywhere."

For the City of Fresno, there's no turning back. As Nagra says, "If RightFax hasn't yet paid for itself, it will shortly. After all, it is helping us cut costs in time and labor by e-faxing, and tax payers are always looking to save money."