Days Till Nine 30
Days Till Nine 30
The NAWCAD Comptroller was struggling with the time-consuming and manual process of accepting incoming external funding. The existing process was completed via email and required multiple manual approvals, which led to delays in processing times. To address this challenge, the NAWCAD Comptroller collaborated with Nine 30 to deploy a SharePoint-based tool called FAST (Funds Acceptance SharePoint Tool).
The customer was looking for a solution that could help them streamline their process of accepting incoming external funding. The solution needed to be easy to use, customizable, and scalable across multiple organizations. The goal was to reduce the processing time for incoming external funding from 28 days.
Nine 30 worked closely with the NAWCAD Comptroller and the BFM community to understand their requirements and co-designed and implemented a SharePoint-based tool called FAST (Funds Acceptance SharePoint Tool). The Nine 30 team worked to train all potential users of the tool across the organization, complete all tool administrative duties, and analyze and report findings from the data collected in the tool.
Automated Workflow: FAST has an automated workflow that simplifies the process of accepting incoming external funding. The workflow was designed to ensure that all required approvals were obtained in the correct order and that the necessary documentation was collected in one place.
Automated Notifications: FAST has an automated notification system that reminds users of upcoming funding acceptance tasks. Care was taken to ensure that there are no single points of failure, addressing a common concern with conducting approvals via email.
Centralized Document Repository: FAST has a centralized document repository that allows users to store and share funding acceptance documents with the entire team. This library stores all related documentation for each funding document, including the final acceptance which is emailed directly to the sponsor.
The implementation of FAST helped the NAWCAD Comptroller to streamline their process of accepting incoming external funding and reduce processing times from 28 days to approximately 4 days. FAST helped the organization to reduce manual effort, improve the accuracy of the funding acceptance process, and eliminate delays caused by manual approvals. The impact was so significant that the FAST team was the recipient of the NAVAIR Commander's Award for Business Innovation.
The FAST tool was able to solve the NAWCAD Comptroller's funding acceptance challenge by automating the process, providing measurable metrics, and centralizing the document repository. The FAST tool helped the customer to save time, reduce manual effort, and improve the accuracy and speed of their funding acceptance process. After learning of the success of the FAST application at NAWCAD, the Fleet Readiness Center East (FRCE) approached Nine 30 to develop their own instance of FAST which was completed in September 2023.