Archives for May 2007
Avoiding the Data Protection Crisis
Whether KPMG’s recent announcement “Six Month countdown to data protection crisis begins” was designed to shock or designed to encourage companies to take action is hard to tell. It did, however, raise awareness of an issue which many organisations were blissfully unaware of and caused a great deal of reaction in the specialised media.
The potential problems highlighted related to the ending of the Transitional Relief exemption period within the Data Protection Act (DPA) which will result in some files collected prior to October 1998 now being subject to the full force of the Act.
So why is this important? It seems that in many companies, it may be a case that they have let these files slip off the radar and so are not aware that they are going to be in breach of the Act.
The recommendation is that organisations take a close look at their own individual situations. Specifically, according to Steve Kenny, Privacy Services Leader with KPMG:
- Establish what structured paper records exist, where and how they are stored, if they contain personally identifiable data;
- If a significant number of files have relied upon transitional relief , then expanding the scope of records management activities should enable you to comply.
If you are already in the process of ensuring that all of your records are scanned or have already done so then of course you should already be covered. If not, then this might be the ideal time to look at this and the company policy on document scanning / management in general and so ensure that everything is in place and up to date.
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Engine Room for Offshore Processing
A major development in the progress of scanning has been the huge growth of the offshore BPO sector. Substantial labour savings, improvement in quality and scalability are the main reasons so many organisations are looking to undertake certain processes in countries such as India. But the practicalities which prevent paper from being sent abroad means that digitising it first is essential.
Companies such as Preview that have substantial electronic communications capability can then upload these images for subsequent processing very quickly and this takes away any security issues associated with paper records leaving the UK.
Preview’s own partner in India – Merit Outsourcing - is a world class provider of services offshore and their quality standards are second to none. In conjunction with Merit, Preview is providing a huge range of capture services to UK clients from simple indexing of documents through to detailed analysis of the data itself. One of the most exciting developments is the growth of accounts payable processing and with a combination of scanning, OCR and offshore matching and processing, cost savings of 50% and more are being achieved. Furthermore clients tell us that their relationships with their own suppliers are improved because they can provide accurate and fast query management and payment.
And it’s not just Preview’s own offshore partner that is seeing growth. Preview now works with over a dozen offshore centres that are either owned or chosen directly by its clients.
To some, the movement of labour intensive jobs offshore is sensitive and depressing. There is no doubt, however, that with over a billion people in the sub continent alone, many of whom are highly educated, this move will continue. But this does open up so many opportunities in the UK as well. In the last 5 years Preview has grown its staff base by over 200% and is continuing to expand to support the growth of digitising material for offshore processing.
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