Business Profile

The Rhode Island Division of Taxation is located in Providence, RI handles all tax administration elements for the state

Industry

State Government

Location

Providence, Rhode Island

Business Solution

  • Barcode generation without complicated programming
  • Provide ability to leverage existing mail inserter equipment

Solimar Products

  • Rubika®
  • SOLfusion™
  • SOLindexer™

Benefits

  • Automate workflow by eliminating manual processes
  • Decrease mail insertion costs
  • Reduce production change and test cycles form 15 days to 5 days
Solution DiagramCase Study (PDF)
Rhode Island Division of Taxation

Solimar Significantly Reduces Production Turnaround for State of Rhode Island

State of Rhode Island, Division of Taxation (RI Tax) is a government agency responsible for managing all aspects of Tax Administration for the State of Rhode Island. RI Tax has systems that process 64 tax types, and it provides imaging and data capture of forms and checks, supports collections systems, inventory management, correspondence, and a new tax payer portal. RI Tax generates various document types that include correspondence, letters, account statements, invoices and bills. The average number of correspondence of personal and business tax payers per month is 77,620 pieces of mail with varying number of pages per correspondence.

“Our Solimar solution has allowed us to reduce our production modification and test cycles from 15 days down to just 5 days.”

Sandra Deneault,
State of Rhode Island, Office of Digital Excellence

Solimar Systems interviewed Sandra Deneault, IT Project Manager for RI Integrated Tax System to discuss how implementing their customized Solimar solution has helped their agency streamline document workflows allowing them to become more productive while lowering operational costs.

RI Tax analyzed their current production workflow and came to the following areas of concern:

  • A lack of automation with mail insertion
  • Restricted output access
  • Slow turnaround time to make production changes and test
  • Effective output control and management

RI Tax generated a list of objectives that the new solution should incorporate and achieve:

  • Ability to create required barcode for use with the mail inserter equipment.
  • No host changes, no report changes, ability to accept the job in PDF form from a folder.
  • The new workflow process needed to be fairly easy to do, without complicated programming or maintenance.
  • Technically this required understanding of where the mail piece boundaries were and then:
    • If required, insert a blank page (for consistency in duplex printing)
    • Counting and sequencing within the mail piece
    • Counting and sequencing the job as a whole
    • Providing a 2D bar code for all of the sequencing which meets mail inserter’s schema
    • Have the ability to provide a Human Readable sequence number for operator assistance
    • Automate the workflow process by placing the finished PDF in another folder while the finished file is sent for printing.
    • Save labor time and costs by eliminating manual insertion which would have been required without this solution.
    • Integrate with existing notice generation system without modifications.
    • Increase integrity and security by adding 2D bar code with sequencing, thereby ensuring that all tax recipients received only their tax statement and information.

The need for document print centers, such as the RI Tax to be more productive and efficient while managing production schedules helps smart IT managers to select and choose Solimar technology. Solimar’s open systems technology allows organizations to maximize their investments in both legacy and contemporary applications and environments. Solimar’s award winning Rubika® product provides a unique post-composition document re-engineering solution specially designed to automate manual processes, maximize postal savings, and enhance print data. Unlike other solutions which rely on custom programming, Rubika® requires no coding at the application level and provides an intuitive user interface to rapidly implement production changes.

Solimar helped the RI Tax by providing support throughout the implementation and testing to ensure the solution would meet the Division’s printing and mailing requirements. The Rubika solution also proved to be the most user-friendly, and ease of deployment was a crucial benefit.

“Solimar streamlined our implementation process for migrating new and existing forms through our change management process,” said Deneault.

“Using our current Solimar Rubika based solution, we have significantly reduced manual operations.”

Sandra Deneault,
State of Rhode Island, Office of Digital Excellence

“The Solimar support staff has been very cooperative and helpful throughout the implementation process,” said Deneault. “The pre-sales analyst showed us how to do this in half an hour, and then followed up by sending the ‘configuration file’ that we could use.” Deneault added, “We chose to do a 30 day trial to test the Rubika software in an actual test production run. We compared the programming time needed to do this with other software programs. At the end of the Rubika trial period we knew we had a working solution to take to production.”

“Our Solimar Rubika solution has allowed us to reduce our production modification and test cycles from 15 days down to just 5 days,” said Deneault. “We are much more efficient as a result of Rubika.”

With the ease of this solution, and the success and excellent support from Solimar the RI Tax project was able to remain on schedule. The RI Tax’s development staff continues to praise the support they have received from Solimar. Questions are answered quickly and thoroughly. The Office of Digital Excellence is suggesting to other divisions within the State of Rhode Island that they also look at Solimar to provide them with solutions to all their document communication needs.