Background
The International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF) is the driving force behind nearly every advance in the fire and emergency services in the 21st century.
With headquarters in Washington, DC, and Ottawa, Ontario, the IAFF represents more than 324,000 full-time professional fire fighters and paramedics in more than 3,500 affiliates. IAFF members protect more than 85% of the population in communities throughout the United States and Canada.
Challenge
Some of the decisions made within the IAFF are done through a paper-based voting process. While historically this method has satisfied their needs, as their organization has grown, the amount of time required to complete the voting activity has increased. While the organization has simplified their voting activity with a Bloc Vote methodology, they knew there were more efficient ways to capture, communicate, convey, and confirm the intent of their members. Many of whom are not a part of the same organization, but are only members or affiliates.
Solution
The IAFF Bloc Vote solution leveraged Nintex Workflow Cloud, O365 SharePoint w/Nintex Forms, and Nintex Sign in order to capture, communicate, convey, and confirm the results of the Bloc Vote.
A Nintex Workflow Cloud (NWC) based form was created to capture the voters and initiate the voting (workflow) process. As a result, communications were sent by the NWC workflow letting Bloc Vote participants know of their opportunity to vote and convey their decision on the voting matter. Finally, a Nintex Sign Request is sent in order to confirm that the voter’s decision was captured securely and accurately. Throughout the process O365 SharePoint Lists helped monitor the voting activity while also serving as the data backup for the Bloc Vote process. Once the assessment was completed and the specific requirements were documented, the NINTEX solution was easily created and deployed. The solution also avoided any interruptions to IAFF’s working environment and users of the solution felt that it was intuitive and easy to use. Innovative solutions should be defined by their usefulness, cost effectiveness, ability to scale and how well they are received by the end user community.
Result
The Key benefits:
- A paperless voting process, eliminating the need to manage and store paper records
- Reduced the amount of time to capture votes
- Reduced the amount of time to verify votes
- Improved the ability to capture signatures
- Allowed blast communications to be sent
- Managed real time notifications without human involvement
- Reduced the risk of errors in the process
- Gained IAFF voter confidence and improved customer satisfaction
- Leveraged component workflows to reduce administrative overhead
- Allows for future growth and scalability
- User’s do not have to exist in the same domain/tenant
- Savings, savings, savings