Archives for the 'Data Management' Category
Loyalty brings success at Waterstone’s
Loyalty cards have become part and parcel of everyday life and are an increasingly important tool for businesses looking to reward customers who remain loyal to their brand. However, for the system to run smoothly, there is a great deal of work going on behind the scenes from the moment the customer completes the application form to when they use their reward points and the savings they bring.
After careful planning, Waterstone’s launched their own loyalty card, The Waterstone’s Card, in September 2007 giving their customers the chance to earn points every time they purchased books in their stores or online. The scheme also gave the cardholders the opportunity to take advantage of unique special offers, receive email newsletters and enter exclusive competitions.
To process all of the application forms being returned from their stores, Waterstone’s needed a partner able to manage this key part of the operation. The company would need the resources in place to receive and scan the incoming loyalty card forms before securely sending on the details. They consulted Careline Services, one of their trusted suppliers, who in turn was able to recommended Preview as the ideal partner to fulfil this role and a company they already enjoyed a successful working relationship with. Having some of the most comprehensive systems in the UK, Preview was well able to handle the requirements.
The national loyalty scheme is across 330 Waterstone’s stores in the UK and Europe, and on Waterstones.com. Customers were asked to fill out an application form, and these forms were then batched up at the end of each day and sent via Royal Mail directly to Preview from each individual store. Sending the forms straight to Preview meant that the process was significantly speeded up and allowed the customers’ details to be registered on the database as quickly as possible.
Upon arrival, the forms were verified and prepared for scanning. Once scanned, these images were forwarded to the CRM database where key information from the forms including name and address and email address were recorded. This all ensured that when their card was used in store, the points were added correctly, Waterstone’s knew which customer was shopping and could therefore track their behaviour, segmenting them into specific customer groups ensuring any communication to them is relevant.
The Waterstone’s Card has proven to be an overwhelming success and, as of the middle of August 2008 1,701,446 card forms have been scanned and the pace shows no sign of slowing which is good news for Waterstone’s and great news for the thousands of new cardholders joining the programme every week.
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Survey Creation and Management for Legal Services Commission
When an organisation is looking to conduct a survey, it can be a daunting task at the best of times. When it is looking to collect and act on the requirements of several thousand individuals, this adds additional complexity. And when this needs to be done both online and offline with all of the results collated electronically, then you would expect to have to coordinate multiple suppliers which could have you pulling your hair out.
At least that’s what the Legal Services Commission imagined when they instigated a nationwide census with the Bar Council of 15,000 barristers towards the end of 2007. Their aim in doing so was to get a clearer picture of what the profession looked like in order to ensure a robust Impact Assessment was conducted as part of the legal aid reforms. To encourage as large a response as possible, they rightly felt it was important to conduct the survey both online and offline, using both a printed questionnaire and a web based electronic form.
What they didn’t expect was being able to find a company which could provide a full service offering which covered all their requirements. However, in Preview, the Legal Services Commission found a company which could demonstrate considerable experience with both online and offline data and one which was able to offer a service which covered all of the key elements needed to create, run and evaluate a full survey across a diverse profession.
The first stage involved designing and creating the survey form itself. This was done in conjunction with the Legal Services Commission to create both an 8 page printed questionnaire and an online survey. For the printed form, the layout was planned and the printing organised in preparation for the direct mailing out to the members. The layout was designed in such a way that the returned forms could be immediately scanned and the information they contained recorded to then be collated with the results gathered online. The web page containing the electronic survey was also created to make it as easy to complete as possible and was then hosted behind the Bar Council’s own website.
As soon as the questionnaires were sent out and the Bar membership was informed about the online survey form, there was a constant flow of responses back. As they arrived, the forms were scanned and indexed, and both the response and any additional comments recorded for each of the questions. All of this information could then be pooled with the results from the online survey and stored in the database ready for processing.
The response rates to both formats were good and a large amount of information was recorded from the membership eager to contribute their views. Once the majority of the responses had been received, Preview was able to pull together both summary results and a more detailed review of the comments and responses to individual questions. All of this information was collated and the raw data was sent to the Legal Services Commission in electronic form for analysis.
No matter what field you work in, having a clear understanding of what your customers want is key and, as the Legal Services Commission discovered, customer surveys and market research are excellent ways of achieving that. Nevertheless, gathering the information from multiple on- and offline sources and then coordinating and collating the results, is no easy task. Fortunately, with the full service offering from Preview taking care of these issues, the Legal Services Commission was able to concentrate on using the information they had gathered rather than worrying about how to collect it.
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Virtualisation - so what exactly is it?
When it comes to document scanning, virtualisation refers to the idea of storing documents in a virtual environment, creating a secure storage area akin to a vault or a safe where we can keep our information and documents safe … just like in a physical one, only this time virtually. Essentially, it comes down to creating a highly secured area which contains your company’s information and yet makes it instantly accessible to you all day every day, whatever your location.
To achieve this, our own solution for this uses eView+ which is exactly this type of Virtual Vault. It’s also an ideal solution for companies who want all the benefits that document scanning offers, but are unsure if they want to hold the information themselves or indeed whether they have sufficient space on their own servers to do so.
Effectively outsourcing this storage and secure access has proven to be the perfect solution for many organisations and is becoming increasingly popular - with an outsourced or managed service, you can be certain that everything is in place and done correctly for you. Although the size of company looking for this varies enormously, the solution works equally well if you only need a small number of documents stored or are looking to index hundreds of thousands of records. With well over half a billion documents already stored, size is most certainly not an issue.
Added to this, should the worse happen and records you hold at your own offices, in whatever format, are damaged or lost, then you are ideally covered from a disaster recovery perspective and can be back up and running almost immediately – saving you time, inconvenience and expense.
So next time you hear virtualisation, just think of a secure Virtual Vault, safely looking after your most important documents.
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Virtual Datarooms - not just for lawyers
Virtual datarooms are most commonly associated with very specific situations such as the due diligence process during a merger or acquisition. However, virtual datarooms are much more versatile than that and can be of enormous benefit to any company with large amounts of confidential information that need to be stored and shared securely.
A virtual dataroom is essentially a secure on-line document management system that allows you to store and index its information securely and then locate and retrieve it as required. Looked at in that way, it’s clear that this is what most companies require to house their key information and make widely accessible - particularly those which have employees at different locations and different offices that could be in different countries and timezones around the world.
There are also major benefits to be had by giving the growing band of home workers and mobile workers access to the information they need for their work, not forgetting the large number of shift workers that have traditionally had issues with data accessibility. Increased productivity is one obvious benefit, so too is avoiding confidential documents being transmitted by email and the creation of multiple revisions that can make it difficult to ensure that everyone has the same (and latest) information at their disposal.
So what types of organisations would benefit from this type of information storage within a company? To be honest, most companies suffer from having huge amounts of information scattered around the organisation that would benefit lots of different departments but that only a few people know exist. A fully indexed and accessible online document management system or virtual dataroom would soon open make this information available again.
There are also specific types of projects which would greatly benefit from this, primarily those which require cooperation and input from people who are in different locations but need to have access to a central source of information to work effectively. This might include projects such as ISO quality programmes, tender submissions for new business, product development or market research – all key projects that normally require huge amounts of resources and people to achieve the quality required and could greatly benefit from an online corporate dataroom.
The other benefits show just how attractive an option it can be at many different levels:
- instant access 24/7 from any location (given the relevant security codes of course) so that remote workers and different offices are all able to use the information;
- comprehensive indexing system allowing easy categorisation of documents and files as well as a full search facility;
- safe and secure access as well as multiple security levels giving total control over access to the information;
- full audit trail of documents and users’ access
All the benefits of virtual datarooms that have been enjoyed by some are entirely appropriate for all types of organisations. Just think of them as your corporate dataroom or secure online document storerooms and you’ll never have to go looking for a lost document again.
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Preview Services acquires data management company
Preview Services Ltd - one of the UK’s leading document scanning and document management outsourcing organisations has acquired the trade and assets of February Automation Ltd.
Established in 1965, February Automation has been successfully offering a range of data management solutions including data capture and verification, database building and maintenance, response handling, mailing work and data storage to large blue chip and government organisations throughout the UK. Some of its clients include organisations such as Legal & General, Vodafone and the Conservative Party Central Office.
With the same ethos of providing an excellent quality service without compromise to its clients and affording a high level of flexibility, February Automation fits well with Preview’s document management, scanning and archiving activities.
Commenting on the acquisition, Preview’s Managing Director, Mike James said, “We are delighted to have acquired the skills and experience of a business that has been at the forefront of the industry for so long and we look forward to welcoming their clients into our organisation.”
Tom Fuller, February Automation’s MD for many years, will be joining Preview and was also delighted with the move. “With Preview’s market strength and knowledge I am sure we can offer our clients an even better service and introduce them to a whole new range of services for the future.”
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