North Tyneside Council Improves Efficiency with the DocFinity Suite of Document Management Solutions
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Located on the Tyne River in the north of England, the North Tyneside Metropolitan Council has been at the forefront of creating and securing more than 2,500 jobs, developing more than 2,000,000 square feet of space for job creation purposes and establishing four new prestigious business parks. Dedicated to the economic development, North Tyneside Council provides a range of business support services to their 200,000 residents, 22,000 properties and 5,000 businesses.
North Tyneside Council is responsible for overseeing twenty-five council sites surrounding the regional capital of Newcastle upon Tyne. The wide range of services provided include: financial management, marketing and public relations, information technology, economic development, architecture and engineering, police services, strategic planning, social services and waste disposal.
Having experienced a rapid growth rate within the last year, and unable to keep up with the enormous amounts of paperwork, the North Tyneside Council has undergone an overall restructuring program. The Council has embarked on a five year project to migrate from a proprietary mainframe system to an open system platform. Part of this project includes installing a new council tax and benefit system. Due to the vast quantities of paperwork generated by these departments, the North Tyneside Council looked to OITUK (Formerly Graphic Data, Ltd.), for a document management system that will improve efficiency and customer service within its council tax and benefit divisions.
An Easy Decision
OITUK is the United Kingdoms only full-service document management solutions provider incorporating the Country’s largest scanning and image capture bureau. Their flagship product, Optical Image Technology, Inc.’s (OIT) DocFinity® Suite of Document Management Software, was chosen by the North Tyneside Council for the system’s ability to operate alongside Unix and Oracle platforms.
The North Tyneside Council chose to implement 150 concurrent licenses of DocFinity COLD-ERM, DocFinity Imaging, DocFinity WorkFlow, DocFinity Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM), and DocFinity Print/Fax Server. Utilizing a Wide Area Network (WAN) using native clients, the different sites have instant access to all stored information, which greatly increases productivity and customer service.
Greg Taylor, open systems program leader at North Tyneside comments, "We believe that the new document management system will radically improve the efficiency of our council tax and benefit departments. Instead of documentation being physically driven to each site, it will be available on-line for staff at different sites to access at the touch of a button. This improved access to documentation will speed up time taken to handle customer inquiries."
Making the System Work
Before the North Tyneside Council installed the document management system, a customer service representative would write down any questions customers called with, then arranged a time to call the customer back. They then had to go to the paper files, which were stored elsewhere in the building, find the relevant information and telephone the customer with answers to their questions. Now, since staff members can access information without leaving their desks, questions are answered while the customer is still on the phone!
With OIT’s sophisticated search facilities, relevant information can be found even if customers call without their account number or other pertinent information. The new system means that electronic filing is completed in a more disciplined way so information is more accessible.
The document management system eradicates the problems often associated with paper-based filing. For example, when a number of people are using the same information, it is inevitable that some will be accidentally misfiled or that it is inaccessible to others while it is being used. Also, for organizations such as North Tyneside Council where a large amount of paper is being generated on daily basis, a backlog of filing quickly develops making it inconvenient and virtually impossible to find customer information.
North Tyneside Council opted to install the document management system in their Council Tax and Benefits Department to handle tax documentation. The system enables all paperwork received, such as letters from homeowners, payment information, etc., to be electronically scanned into DocFinity Imaging. This information is also linked to their mainframe held customer database so that accurate and up-to-date information is maintained throughout the organization. User acceptance across the organization has been high.
The document management system will do more than support North Tyneside Council’s filing requirements. DocFinity COLD-ERM’s Query Engine can provide valuable management information. For example, it can extract document data relative to a new customer.
This system is also designed to handle the complicated demands of dealing with benefit claims that involve lengthy application forms along with supporting documentation such as pay slips and bank statements. To process these claims, DocFinity WorkFlow incorporates flexible workflow facilities to monitor a wide range of elements and their progression through North Tyneside’s systems.
A Big Success
"By having OITUK project managing the installation, we will benefit from having expert personnel working alongside our own staff to ensure that the system runs as smoothly as possible," says Taylor. The system is currently being accessed by staff based in the council’s corporate finance department and it’s customer service centers.
