Modernising
reportingef ficiencies

This Australian police force provides
a range of policing services
24 hours a day, seven days a week
to keep citizens safe. Thousands ofemployees work across over 100
police stations.

The challenge
In times of emergency, there is a great need for police
forces to be organised and prepared to respond toever-changing circumstances – of ficers are often diverted
from usual duties to cater to these special events.
COVID-19 was no exception. The pandemic has changed
the whole world and even police of ficers were notimmune to its ef fects. This customer needed to be able
to report at any given time how many of ficers had been
diverted to pandemic-related duties, how many were in
isolation or quarantine, and how many were diverted toborders in times of tight interstate travel rules, in order tosystematically deploy staf f. The report would also haveto suggest where additional resources could be acquired
if needed. However, the unexpectedly huge impact of
COVID-19 meant that the customer suddenly faced theconsequences of not having any one system that could
attain this critical information. Staf fing was being manually
recorded in Excel spreadsheets, which had become
inaccurate as many dif ferent versions were used across thepolice force’s 56 branches. Reports were intended to becreated daily, however due to the immensity of the task,
were laboriously processed either late or not at all. In orderto keep the community safe and healthy, the force needed
a way to quickly view their staf fing situation and makeadjustments in the ef fort to control the pandemic’s spread.

The solution
The customer turned to long-time partner Fujitsu forassistance. Having worked together for decades, thetwo organisations were able to quickly collaborate andpropose an innovative solution that would be able tokeep the police force functioning ef ficiently. SharePoint
was used to store and share each branch’s staf fingspreadsheets, allowing for live updates that were instantly
reflected across the force. SharePoint also carried theability to restrict access to branch stakeholders – crucial
when dealing with potentially sensitive staf f information.
Then, Microsoft Excel Power Query would collate
data from these individual service spreadsheets into
an organisation-wide document. Each day, the Power
Query table data could easily and quickly be extracted
to generate an easily digestible PDF report for police
force executives. In this way, the process was completelytransformed for maximum ef ficiency and minimum labour.

The Outcomes
Because of the ease and speed of the new businessapplication, reports were able to be run at the required
daily rate with minimal training needed. The time togenerate the report was reduced from hours to mere
minutes. This was crucial in a time of great uncertainty
where new regulations and announcements were madedaily, and lives constantly at risk. Service owners could
easily see on the report where backup resources could be
attained from, minimising disruption to regular operations
and allowing the whole force to run far more ef ficiently
without unnecessary staf fing shortages. The reporting
application is not only useful in the time of COVID-19,
however – it will be utilised for other emergencies or
special events in the future also when extra resources
are required. With the relevant Police Commissioner andstate Premier also receiving the reports, their accuracy,reliability and practicality were proven.

Fujitsu and this customer were able to leverage theirlong term relationship in the face of a global disaster,
successfully easing the mounting pressure on policing
staf f. The application transformation is not only beneficial
during the current climate, but will continue to provide
value to the organisation as it recovers from thepandemic’s ef fects and returns to normal operations. In
addition to its benefits internally, Fujitsu’s solution will
help to keep the local community safe as the police force
accurately assigns and recruits of ficers to reflect demand.
In this way, Fujitsu has delivered on its goal to build trust insociety through increased safety and security.

www.fujitsu.com/au

enquire@fujitsu.com