Archives for the 'Document Scanning Case Studies' 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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Aqua Solutions: Secure scanning for Financial Services
If you are looking for an industry in which paperwork is continually generated then you would be hard pushed to find one to rival the financial services sector. It is also one of the most competitive, where customer service is key and can be the difference between retaining and losing a client. Indeed Aqua’s reputation for delivering clear, current, independent advice backed by customer service excellence is something they take very seriously as well as being one of the financial services’ primary areas of focus this year with the ‘Treating Customers Fairly’ initiative.
Certainly, for a successful and growing company like Aqua Financial Solutions, that has been advising their clients for many years on all aspects of financial planning, having immediate access to customer files has been paramount to maintaining the service excellence with which they have long been associated.
To ensure this level of service as the company continues to grow requires that all Aqua’s client facing systems be as scalable as possible. The decision was taken, therefore, to transfer all of their client files to an online system so that they could be integrated with the rest of their clients’ information and documents. Having all of the information together and accessible online allows immediate access and ensures speed of response.
Due to the confidential and precise nature of the data, this meant careful scanning and indexing of all their client files. Aqua selected Preview to partner them in this on the basis of their reputation in the field and their ability to offer all of the elements that Aqua were looking for both in terms of scanning and indexing, as well as the secure storage of the files.
The scanning was done in conjunction with Preview’s state-of-the-art Records Management Centre where the paper records were archived once scanning had been completed. The electronic files were then indexed to replicate the original file folder structure in Aqua’s internal system which uses the Quay Software Document Management system. This meant the digital files could be easily integrated with the files already held in the system making both filing and access as straightforward and quick as possible.
“Above all,” commented Carolyn Bennett, Director at Aqua Solutions, “it was the flexible approach and the ability to handle secure data at Preview that really made the choice simple for us. We had specific requirements for the scanning and indexing to fit with our own systems and Preview was able to deliver that for us.”
Now that the past records are scanned and in place, the job of maintaining the information with new files is a simple one with new files scanned and stored on a regular basis to keep the client files up to date. With their business continuing to grow through recommendation and word of mouth, Aqua Financial Solutions look likely to keep both themselves and Preview busy well into the future.
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Secure scanning for Dorset Police Authority
In recent years, Preview has worked with several UK Police Authorities, providing them with document scanning, archiving and indexing services. Much of the work has been focused on the sensitive area of child protection as a result of the IMPACT Programme which was set up in the wake of the Soham murders. This programme will ultimately deliver the Police National Database, a national intelligence sharing system. There have also been a number of other projects which fall under the Management of Police Information (MOPI) code of practice.
The latest project was for Dorset Police, who needed to scan and index several years worth of child protection files and required a document scanning services company with very specific qualities to ensure the absolute security of this information. Key to those requirements were that the personnel handling the files needed to have been security vetted within the previous 18 months.
Fortunately, because of their longstanding relationships with several Police Forces on projects relating to sensitive material, Preview has always maintained security vetted staff. They were therefore comfortably able to provide a team who had been fully vetted within the previous year, easily complying with the requirements. Since no additional verification was therefore required, they were able to progress the work quickly and smoothly.
There were still a number of additional requirements which placed certain functional constraints on the staff working on the project. Understandably, access to the files was restricted to normal working hours so many aspects of the work – namely the cataloguing, prepping, scanning and Quality Control stages - needed to be carried out on site during that time.
To ensure that the work was completed quickly and in line with the timeframes laid down for the project, a team of 6 people was used to carry out the work. With this team in place, Preview was able to deliver a fully scanned and indexed set of documents which contained some 600,000 images on schedule and on budget.
The scanning and indexing of existing paper based records has been key to the ongoing implementation of data-based policing initiatives. Preview offers a range of outsourced scanning, archiving & document management services perfectly matched to their requirements and, with Dorset Police, has once again demonstrated their ability to work closely with UK police forces to help them rapidly implement such initiatives.
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Document Scanning for Leeds Mental Health Trust
At Preview, we deal with a lot of different types of organisations from international conglomerates to locally focused IFAs, and from IT companies, legal firms and many more besides. However, we also work with public organisations such as local goverment and local health authorities which suffer from the same types of issues and have the same requirements in terms of paperwork as anyone else.
Take Leeds Mental Health Trust as an example. They have an HR department on a par with any large other organisation generating documentation that needs to be organised and indexed in the same way that a private company does, perhaps even more so. They also have the added complexity of multiple locations, with documents being generated and often held in over 50 different locations across the Leeds metropolitan area.
Now, with the scanning of the documents and the records completed, there is much quicker access to the documents and relevant information using a central up to date resource. To achieve this, some 6,000 files were processed and 340,000 images were created which were then cross-indexed by employee name and NI number.
The new system has made it very easy to consolidate the records for one employee in a single file – thus ensuring that any given employee’s file is completely up to date. Another significant benefit of scanning the HR files is that it makes it much easier to comply with Home Office Reporting requirements as the required work permit records are now available instantly, as and when they are needed.
The system proved to be such as success that recently Leeds Mental Health Trust has also scanned and centralised all of their Leavers’ files, with Preview’s security vetted staff taking on the task of collecting, scanning and indexing these important records as well.
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Document Scanning moves mountains for Carillion
With major construction projects comes a paperwork mountain to match and the efficient storage of all the drawings and information can provide an “Everest” size headache.
It was just this type of situation that Carillion, one of the UK’s leading support services and construction companies, found themselves in. A number of recently completed projects had generated so much documentation that it was being housed in several rooms on site and two additional lock ups, not to mention a number of corridor shelves which had been brought in to ease the pressure!
Something had to be done and a programme of document scanning seemed to be the ideal solution, providing better document management, instant access and, of course, freeing up the precious space. The scanning would need to be of both the reams of documents and large scale drawings that were involved.
Carillion had worked with Preview previously on other projects and chose them again as being the best able to deliver on all the key elements required from an operational and organisational perspective. Above all, time was of the essence as Carillion were imminently moving into new offices, so there were critical milestones that needed to be achieved giving little margin for error.
No need to worry - the scanning was completed successfully and the move went ahead without the mountain of paperwork in tow. Now, with the document scanning safely under control, office space is no longer a barrier to having the right information safely stored and available, allowing Carillion to concentrate on moving their own mountains in their projects.
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Scanning at the Bodleian Library
We can learn a huge amount from the past but sometimes even the accumulated knowledge that it holds can benefit from new techniques and technologies that the present offers.
Take the case of the Bodleian Library for example. The Bodleian is the main research library of the University of Oxford and the second largest library in the UK whose collections are used by scholars from around the world. The information it holds is priceless.
As part of a major refurbishment plan, the architects needed to have access to the plans of the existing structures, while at the same time it was imperative that the drawings themselves were kept safe. The solution was to use document scanning, providing the architects with scanned images while protecting the original drawings.
Fortunately, Preview are experts in the process of digitising historic material and previously the Preview team has scanned material that is several hundred years old. Not only does this safeguard their use but of course also preserves the content in perpetuity. In this case too, the people at the Bodleian Library have been delighted with the results and intend to consider more scanning of historic material in the future.
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